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Industrial Accident Goes Viral for all the Wrong Reasons

ENGINEERING.com director of content explains report on industrial accident fails to humanize victim.

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In recent news, Sarah O’Connor, a Financial Times reporter, nearly broke the internet with a single tweet while promoting her story on a tragic industrial accident in a German Volkswagen plant.

The 22-year-old man was part of a contractor team setting up a stationary robot at Volkswagen’s Kassel pant which, going through its programmed motions, grabbed him and crushed him against a metal plate. The young man died as a result of his injuries.

Volkswagen has rejected our request to release the name of the victim.

Unfortunately, industrial accidents happen all the time, but are rarely deemed newsworthy. So what made this one go viral? In an odd coincidence it was the reporter’s name that stirred the internet into a frenzy, barring an almost eerie resemblance to the fictional character “Sarah Connor,” from the Terminator film series.

It wasn’t long before the press released the following articles:

Public response to the coincidence, not the story itself, quickly overwhelmed O’Connor.

What we have here is a classic example of how engineering-ignorant mass media spins reality to create a narrative where technology is dangerous to humanity.

As technically competent professionals, we need to be on the lookout for this kind of yellow journalism and make sure that everyone in our immediate circles understands how non-experts continually distort industrial automation.

Pick-and-place robots are not capable of intentionally killing anyone. As relatively simple motion devices, they are only as likely to cause fatal accidents as a punch press, conveyor system, crane or any other industrial machine. If the victim had been killed by anything else, like a hydraulic ram, this story wouldn’t have blown up.

Not releasing the name of the victim was Volkswagen’s mistake. This move plays into the “man versus machine” spin the mass media loves so much and takes attention away from an important lesson factory floor workers need to learn.

We need to take lockout procedures seriously. The kind of accident that occurred at Volkswagen’s Kassel plant can happen anywhere at any time so it’s important to check, double check and even triple check your lockouts.

To learn more about the incident, read the Financial Times article here.

Written by

James Anderton

Jim Anderton is the Director of Content for ENGINEERING.com. Mr. Anderton was formerly editor of Canadian Metalworking Magazine and has contributed to a wide range of print and on-line publications, including Design Engineering, Canadian Plastics, Service Station and Garage Management, Autovision, and the National Post. He also brings prior industry experience in quality and part design for a Tier One automotive supplier.