This 1970s color film from The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Mines and Mineral Industries offers a brief but helpful reminder on the role that established habits play in developing good safety standards both at work and at home. Reenactments of common overexertion and convenience-based workplace injuries are provided along with tips for correcting negligent coworkers (TRT: 12:39).
Miners exit a shaft elevator wearing overalls and hardhats with headlamps. Engineers at an outdoor power plant. Heavy machinery at an excavation site (0:10). An injured man in a work uniform lies flat on his back. Coworkers attempt to move his injured body. A sign near a rack of hardhats: “Caution: Hard Hat Area” (0:26). The logo of the Department of the Interior Bureau of Mines and Mineral Industries with a seal: “Safety, Efficiency” (0:38). Opening titles: “Man and His Habits.” Acknowledgements (0:44). Workers perform repetitive tasks with the smooth efficiency of habit: An excavator operator works levers, a bricklayer uses a trowel and mortar, a typist at a typewriter. A man with a lunch pail enters a 1970s automobile (1:10). The car drives down an open residential street. A stop sign. “John” drives to work past a golf course. A stoplight appears, but John misses the red light (1: 46). A foot on the brakes. Broken glass. The aftermath of a collision (2:36). A delivery driver with a Dodge truck, “Carl” calls for a replacement vehicle, which ends up being a manual stick shift. He stalls in an intersection (2:54). A worker in a cement factory fills sacks of powder while wearing goggles (4:03). Familiar quotidienne routine habits. Sleeping, reading a newspaper at breakfast, sitting on a couch (4:29). Three men work together to lift a heavy load. Another man tries to lift alone and injures himself. “Get Help” posters and lifting safety PSAs. A lecture with a wooden model illustrates a spinal injury. A man in a hard hat lifts a tool bag clumsily with one arm, then grabs his back in pain (5:00). A machinist lifts a tray with both hands, bending at the knees. A mine worker operates a shovel (5:47). A pair of miners work together to install rock bolts and temporary supports (6:24). “Bud O’Leary” moves a trailing cable for a large shovel using gloves, then again barehanded. An electric shock gives him a jolt (7:03). In a wood shop, a coworker corrects a man working without a safety guard (8:18). A man with a ball peen hammer wears safety goggles. A “Danger: High Voltage” sign on a fusebox (8:45). A forklift carries a bundle of lumber (9:20). A foreman lectures to unsafe miners. A welder neglects his blast guard, and is also corrected (9:40). In a training session, a ball bearing is sent through a tube, but a safety goggle lens is unharmed (10:25). A woman uses a hedge trimmer while waving to a homecoming husband. The husband notices the cord does not have a ground wire, and corrects her. Later, the father finds a baseball bat on the front porch. He has his boys remove the hazard before returning to play (10:51). “The End” (12:25).
