I started working in machine shops (at age 13) in 1966. My hair has been long enough to braid (plait) since I was 11 (it grew too fast to maintain in "short" form). Unbraided, my hair falls somewhere between my shoulder blades and waist. Few people have ever seen my hair unbraided.
In the early-1970's the "shag" haircut was in vogue. A shop manager who wore a "shag" cut was telling me how dangerous my long (braided and stuffed down the back of my shirt) hair was. He leaned up against the turret of the mill (pulled way forward and tilted outward to make an angle cut) and his "shag" was grabbed by the belt and pulled out a couple of square inches of hair and a bit of skin.
I was working in a shop in Germany (also in the early-1970's) when an inspector who was wearing a tie leaned over the lathe a couple down the row from where I was working. It caught on something, hauled him in, and snapped his neck.
On the converse side, when I was an apprentice it was rare to see a journeyman machinist will all ten digits. It was even worse in the lumber mills (Everett, Washington, USA was a timber and pulp & paper town in those days). The accidents that caused many of those lost digits have been made rare by Occupational Health & Safety regulations. Yes, safety is an attitude more than anything else. Yes, there are ill-considered regulations. But I remember well the days when I had to climb down chipper clean-outs without a lock-out device on the starter for said devices. They were arranged such that somebody could "bump" them and fire-up the chipper. The guy who did that "job" before me was killed that way. Small shops were never really a problem, but large companies run by bean-counters only changed their policies when forced by the threat of fines and jail time.
I have been working with sharp objects spinning and moving at high speed for (almost) 50 years. I have been working with corrosive and highly-exothermic materials for nearly as long. The Cowboy after OSHA cartoon (popular in the late-1970's) was satire rather than reality. There were several projects I quit rather than work under managers who would not allow me to stack the odds of my being uninjured in my favor. Such a manager today would be fired (and possibly fined and/or jailed) -- which falls in the good things category in my book.
To be fair in the other direction, I lived through the several iterations of catwalk kick-board safety devices. There was a learning curve associated with them. It was enough to drive a system's designer out of what was left of their mind making the changes as the various conditions under which the rules had to operate were accounted. Ditto for handrails. Today we (at least here in the U.S.) have a nice 11 page checklist for everything associated with workstands, catwalks, stairs, and ladders that is easy to follow and has (virtually) eliminated the accidents and injuries associated therewith. Most States (here in the U.S.) have Labor & Industries departments that will work with you to mitigate problems (the exceptions to this statement are quite obnoxious) and dangers.
