[32656] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Facts, Statistics and Urban Legends from the backhoe conventi
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Roeland Meyer)
Wed Dec 6 04:39:00 2000
Message-ID: <9DC8BBAD4FF100408FC7D18D1F0922869A73@condor.mhsc.com>
From: Roeland Meyer <rmeyer@mhsc.com>
To: 'Sean Donelan' <sean@donelan.com>, nanog@merit.edu
Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 01:32:48 -0800
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> From: Sean Donelan [mailto:sean@donelan.com]
> Sent: Sunday, December 03, 2000 6:59 AM
I noticed these two points, from you message, and moved them together.
If this is the current business case, for excavators;
> A review of 582 damage incidents caused by excavator error resulted
> in an average cost to the excavator of $1,488 per incident.
> It is often
> less expensive for the excavator to dig through the utilities than
> around them.
Then what do you think would happen if the real costs were
passed on for them to pay?
> Sprint estimates the cost to repair a single cable cut between
> $50,000 to $65,000. Loss of Use costs may be over $200,000.
This sounds real accurate. Why aren't the excavators seeing
these costs? I'd bet a saw-buck that their behavior would be
modified if this was what they were hit with.
> In one court case, the excavator's president testified that it was
> his company's standard practice to ignore OSHA regulations,
> ANSI standards,
> and guidelines set out in Bell South brochures and to always
> excavate with
> mechanized equipment directly over the orange paint marks showing the
> location of underground telecommunications facilities. He further
> testified that his company averaged one and one-half cable
> cuts a month,
> and considered damging underground facilities as simple a
> cost of doing
> business.
I'm only a businessman, but this sounds like he's a creature
that has adapted adequately to his environment.
> My questions: If he always dug directly over the orange paint
> marks, why
> was the locate so poor he only hit a cable once ever month and a half?
This one made ne laugh for a solid five minutes. ROTFLMAO!
