The hidden dangers of routine: a warning on workplace safety gaps

AMONG the greatest threats to workplace safety is the false comfort that nothing will ever go wrong.

So said American safety speaker and workplace accident survivor Lee Shelby during a vivid feature presentation promoting safety at the American Chamber of Commerce of TT’s HSSE Conference and Exhibition 2025 on November 12.

Shelby knows the cost of that mindset. At 28, he lost both arms in an electrical accident.

From it, he learnt a valuable life lesson — one worth sharing around the globe to mitigate potentially fatal errors.

He issued a warning to TT's business and health and safety leaders: most serious incidents don’t usually come from unusual conditions but from “the mindset we carry into ordinary tasks.”

Shelby admitted that on the day his life changed, he believed risk applied only to others.

“My mindset was that someone might get hurt at this job, but it will never be me,” he said.

“I was always that overconfident, overcocky… person who knew that I was never going to get hurt.”

His account revealed how a chain of small assumptions, procedural gaps, and unchallenged shortcuts led to a routine service removal becoming a catastrophe.

And his story was not offered as history. It was a warning about present-day behaviours that still threaten workers: rushing, distraction, normalising deviations, and avoiding difficult conversations with colleagues.

How a routine job turned catastrophic

Shelby had been working as a power lineman with a US utility company for several years. On August 12, 1991, he joined a six-man crew at a customer’s home to remove an ageing open-wire electrical service before installing a modern replacement.

The hazards were familiar. A 23,000-volt overhead circuit ran through the backyard, with a single-phase conductor along the driveway.

In those years, Shelby explained, the company worked “everything energised.” De-energising lines was not the norm.

Issued insulated gloves, he instead reached for ordinary leather work gloves. “All this time, my brain… was just going over exactly what I’m doing. I’m just changing out a service,” he said.

His focus narrowed. “It was almost like I had blinders on… I wasn’t focused on everything around me, behind me, above me, below me.”

From the bucket of his truck, he called for bolt cutters — steel, uninsulated, and never suitable for live electrical work.

“There was nothing dielectrically tested about a pair of bolt cutters,” he said. But the tools were common, and no one questioned his choice.

He lifted the bucket into position. A colleague stationed 70 feet away gave a thumbs-up. Shelby began cutting the conductors: the bottom hot leg, the middle hot leg, and finally the neutral.

“When I went to cut the neutral… this hand went into that primary conductor. It was energised,” he said.

The contact triggered a phase-to-ground fault.

“Thirteen thousand two hundred volts goes into the right hand… and whenever it goes to a phase-to-ground, it blows up everything.”

The current surged through the bolt cutters and into his left arm. Both hands were burned instantly.

His crew lowered him using the ground-level “dead man levers” and pulled him out.

Smoke rose from his gloves.

All his colleague could do was grab the fingertips and snatch them off.

"When he did that, that gave every one of us the opportunity to see what my hands looked like after the injury.”

He was airlifted to hospital. Within five days, both arms were amputated below the elbow. He spent 23 days in intensive care.

The details were graphic but necessary. None of the conditions was extraordinary. The errors were commonplace, and the result was life-altering.

Prevention depends on mindset, communication and intervention

Shelby focused less on the electrical contact itself than on the decisions that led to it.

Catastrophic events, he said, usually begin with small departures from expected practice—rushed preparation, overconfidence, lack of questioning, and the belief that experience substitutes for caution.

“We make these choices in the blink of an eye sometimes,” he said. “And that’s exactly what I did.”

He challenged participants to examine how silence contributes to unsafe environments.

Workers often avoid correcting a colleague for fear of conflict.

Supervisors may hesitate to intervene when experienced workers deviate from procedure.

That reluctance, he said, is one of the most persistent cultural failures across industries.

“A lot of people do not like to speak up and call someone out when they see them doing something unsafe,” he said.

“These are all excuses. They’re not valid reasons for why we can’t speak up and tell another person, don’t do that.”

Intervention, he argued, must be treated as an obligation.

“It’s your obligation as a human being to stop someone,” he said. “You do not want to be sitting in an emergency room… knowing that they did something unsafe, but you didn’t stop them.”

Respectful communication, he added, is the foundation of effective safety cultures.

“If you’re giving out information to teach somebody something, have respect for that person… If you’re receiving that information, receive it in a respectful manner.”

He also warned about distraction. Experience, he said, often increases risk.

“Distractions are huge in our industries… Cell phones—they’re the worst distraction that we can have.”

One detail epitomised his point: the accident occurred shortly after a weekly safety meeting.

“My accident occurred at 9.54 a.m. Monday morning,” he said.

“I walked out of a safety meeting.”

Training, he suggested, is irrelevant unless it translates into consistent behaviour.

The wider impact of injuries

Shelby described the ripple effect of his injury. The first people impacted were the six men who witnessed the accident.

One colleague, who pulled off the burning gloves, remains haunted.

“He said there was an odour that hit him in the face… the smell of burning flesh,” Shelby recalled. “He can’t wipe this memory out of his brain.”

Beyond the worksite, his family faced the aftermath.

He spent nearly a month in intensive care, then required full support at home. “I didn’t get to take a nurse with me home,” he said.

His wife had to assume every aspect of his care until prosthetics were fitted months later. The strain was immense.

He spoke of the emotional impact on parents and children when a loved one returns home permanently changed.

“These are things you don’t understand until you hear them,” he said. “It is far greater than just you.”

His overarching point was that prevention is human-centred.

The decisions workers make determine not only their own future but the stability, emotional health, and economic security of those closest to them. “Everybody that knows you is affected,” he said.

Today, Shelby maintains a global speaking career, using his experience to prevent recurrences.

“I’m a living example of what not to do when you go to work,” he said.

“Don’t violate your safety rules. Don’t take shortcuts. And don’t get complacent.”

His presentation echoed the conference’s focus on behavioural safety, leadership accountability, and active intervention.

He stressed that familiarity remains one of the greatest risks in modern operations.

“Be a good human, and look out for each other,” he said. “If you see something, say something.”

The lesson, he suggested, is simple. That safety is personal — every day, on every job, and in every decision before work begins.