Accident prevention around the home

Slightly off topic, but a worthy of a link, is MacDoctor's 10 rules for reducing accidents at home. Given that more people dies last year from home accidents then motor accidents in NZ, this blog post is a very worthwhile read. No point having a perfectly well body that is messed up or destroyed by some DIY. I am guilty of doing some of these things - ok all of these things, will make sure I am less blazay about my DIY. Most interesting comment - that test for electrical aliveness inside palm will kill you, where as the back of the hand only get pain. This is because electrical shocks cause muscles to contract. So inside palm your wingers will contract and hold the object, where as the back the muscles contract to pull your hand away. Personally I loath electric shocks so I always use a multi meter.

Once when I was at university I was working on a piece of equipment that we had be warned about, as it's electrode was "open" for touching. We had to unscrew this electrode as part of the experiment, so told make sure that it is off. However I forgot that this electrode had stored electricity on it (acted like a capacitor for you tech's). Thus I got shocked, not once but twice (dooh!). The second time I had a large wrench in my hand to undo the electrode. Due to the muscle contraction the wrench went flying across the lab at great speed. We were very fortunate that no body, or no thing was hurt.