There's a famous shot of an iron worker from the '30's standing on a vertical i beam towards the top of the empire state building during its construction. There's all kinds of film and photos of the buildings going up in the 30's. It's scary what they did/do. Speak to any iron worker and they'll tell you they HATE the safety straps. They spend so much time fucking around with them that many feel they are more of a hazard than a help. I know one who bitches all the time about having to have two. When they are crossing a horizontal beam and have to go around a joint, they have to first hitch the second past the connection, then unhook and rewind the first so they are always attached.
During one of the safety courses I took when I worked on a condo building the instructor told us what to do when someone did fall. The first thing she said was: after you haul him up, have a blanket or something to wrap him in because you'll save him the embarrassment of everyone seeing him after he shit his pants. She said she did not know of one reported case of someone falling and NOT shitting themselves.
Another thing (kind of funny actually) she said that when you set your fall arrest harness a) make sure it is secured to something that can withstand 600 - 1000 lbs (because when you're freefalling and you stop, that's about the stress you put on the harness) and b) to make sure your lanyard is SHORTER than the distance to the next solid object. She said that she's had guys set them with 30 feet of play, and them being 20 feet from the ground lol.....(or something like that).
I can't tell you HOW many times I basically had to force guys to wear a harness when they were working within 4 feet of the edge (with no railing).
(and yeah, I'm sweating bullets just talking about the heights too lol).
