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Ransom Riggs
Insane Safety Videos
by Ransom Riggs - April 13, 2009 - 7:02 AM

Workplace safety is no laughing matter, so presumably the purpose of workplace safety videos is to get people to take it seriously. A few, however, are so ridiculous, unintentionally funny and — by some people’s standards, surely — NSFW, that they’re impossible not to laugh at. (I can’t imagine that helps worker safety much.) This first video, for instance, is bloody even by the standards of modern Hollywood horror films — simultaneously terrifying and hilarious, it deserves an honored place in the workplace safety video canon.

Will You Be Here Tomorrow?
(Warning: it’s a bit graphic!)

Can’t get enough? Here’s a great one about forklift safety. It’s in German, but you’ll get the idea pretty fast: Klaus is a forklift driver, and he’s having a very bad day at work.

For the lighter side of workplace safety, we turn to this retro film clip, “You and Office Safety.” Wokka-wokka!

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Comments (11)

  1. This police instructional video teaches about the dangers of knife-wielding criminals:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIo07GboRLI

    posted by Peter on 4-13-2009 at 7:13 am

  2. Perhaps missing from this post is a train-safety video I was forced to watch in 6th grade. In the video, kids at different locations are playing on some train tracks, and the main character is stuck on a train traveling down the tracks watching the events unfold. At the first location, kids threw rocks and debris at the train, injuring passengers and the main character. At the second location, kids are trying to put branches on tracks on a bridge, and one kid gets his foot stuck and is run over, a la Fried Green Tomatoes (but much more graphic). In the third instance, kids are playing on a stopped boxcar that the train runs into, killing all the children on board. It was gory, violent, and if it had been a theatrical release, probably would have been rated R. Gave me nightmares for the longest time.

    posted by Joel on 4-13-2009 at 8:20 am

  3. Droppen der chainsawen, sch*isskopf!

    posted by Joe Maz on 4-13-2009 at 8:57 am

  4. I have it on the good authority of a friend living in Germany that the Stapelfahrer Klaus video was in fact meant to be a parody. The little moment with the woman distracting everybody around 6:30 was almost Benny Hillian.

    posted by Wilson on 4-13-2009 at 9:49 am

  5. Best example of schadenfreude I’ve ever seen!

    posted by Hastings on 4-13-2009 at 12:47 pm

  6. I hadn’t seen the first video and “simultaneously terrifying and hilarious” is a perfect way of describing it. It made me laugh and cringe.

    posted by JD on 4-13-2009 at 6:12 pm

  7. The worst was a drivers ed video about kids having an accident where one loses his head and it ends up on the dashboard – the two we saw were “Red Asphalt” and “11:57 pm” (I think that is the time). They scared quite a few of us!

    posted by Analouisa on 4-13-2009 at 7:12 pm

  8. I didn’t read the intro paragraph at first, so I felt sort of bad for laughing through the whole thing, especially when the actual people would come on screen. I’ve seen another safety video like that one, just as hilarious but less gory.

    posted by Jenny on 4-14-2009 at 4:16 pm

  9. I remember another safety video called “Hats Off To Safety” or somesuch. The tune that plays throughout the video was really catchy…

    posted by PJ on 4-14-2009 at 7:30 pm

  10. You gotta watch out for those red umbrellas.

    posted by Milo on 4-14-2009 at 8:42 pm

  11. I couldn’t bear to watch the first video past the first few incidents. Yikes!
    As for the second film… That’s why everyone should sit safe and snug in front of their computers reading Mental Floss all day. Good thing we don’t need pencils or filing cabinets anymore!

    posted by Shasta on 4-15-2009 at 5:19 pm

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