There can be some found by the red tool box in the general workshop. They are hanging on the pegboard.
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Why would this be the presumption? If they do not wear side shields and just do as they do now, and they get a broken tool though their prescription lens, are we presently liable? You’re not liable for 18 years of child support when you tell a kid sex means you might knock somebody up and then hand them condoms in the hopes of sparing them the stupid sh@t some will do anyway – or at least not any more so than if you don’t hand them the condoms.
We already have rules that encompass the fact that safety glasses have to be worn or it’s your chump fault if something happens, yes? If not, this whole liability thing is moot – and if we do, we (at MOST) just have to note somewhere for the super-dense types, “hey, these don’t make your eyeglasses safety glasses unless your lenses are already ‘safe’,” and we’re done with it.
Seems like a good common-sense idea to provide these.
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Don’t want to get in a flame war here, but I used to do this for a living when I was an Environmental, Health, and Safety Compliance Director for a generating station, owned and operated by a major corporation. The flaw in your argument is trying to attach logic to the American legal system.
My recommendation is supply the oversize, fits-over-the-prescription-glasses safety glasses, or have Hatchers shoot anyone not wear the proper safety equipment (1st time in the foot, second time in the knee, …).
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While I’m not about to defend the logic of some American laws, it sounds like your and my work experience have a bit of overlap – and in my experience, it’s rare that one can apply enough logic to the American legal system, and the problem instead comes when one tries to apply “common sense” to the system. As Asimov is fond of noting, “common sense” rarely has much if anything at all to do with logic, and logic itself is neither “common” – it is hard, and often not for the layman – nor “sense” – sense experience and empiricism tend to bias one against logic, because they in their lived experience “know better.”
To not overbroaden the argument any further with large-scale condemnations of things like the legal system or general American education on logic and critical thinking, and to stick to the original point: there’s only one opinion on this matter that matters, and that is the one of the legal counsel formally retained by the 'Space – who, generally speaking, would be liable for any incorrect counsel which we then acted upon. (And it’s not like this is some entirely unexplored problem nobody’s ever seen in case law.) And considering that so far we do err toward providing security equipment even though it could be used in a fashion inadequate to a particular application, and caveat emptor – it would seem a bit forced to argue that the addition of this particular piece of kit would somehow increase rather than decrease our liability.
If the fact that someone can pick up a piece of safety equipment that doesn’t provide sufficient safety for the task at hand would by itself be enough to make us worry about being liable for their error, adding side guards as available safety equipment would be the last of my worries – when the #1 with a bullet most frequent issue with this is people grabbing those very same oversize safety glasses that you recommend and using them for something that would very clearly require a full face shield. That would be followed in no particular order by wearing tinted safety glasses for tasks that should require a particular specific amount of darking, and by – here’s the other death knell to this argument – people wearing 'Space provided PC safety glasses that are clearly chipped and scratched, thus lowering their effective safety rating. If anything were to make us liable for someone’s injury, that’d be it – not providing more safety equipment in good condition.
Truth is, we cover our liability in our required safety classes. We tell them what they are and aren’t required to use when operating particular tools requiring safety equipment. (Aside: not a terrible reason to create a little more structured onboarding process for new members, to cover “general cases” with that a little more thoroughly… different topic, and one anyone who’s ever overheard me knows I’m happy to talk about.) It is then up to them to comply with our rules and their safety requirements for their task at hand. Giving them more free options for complying with those rather than making them roll their own doesn’t shift liability, and really only potentially increases the safety of our members in the shop.
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