You can put every possible safety procedure or device in place, and still there will be tragic construction accidents. Most of the serious accidents I've come across were the result of simple human error - workers forgetting to fasten ther safety harness, not shutting off safety switches, using short cuts. As long as workers are inattentive or careless, these accidents will occur.

A large jury award does not mean that an employer or contractor did anything wrong -I've seen many a jury let their sympathy override their common sense in awarding damages. It's not entirely predictable or consistant - I've seen a jury award insufficient damages to a claimant with the appeal of Jabba the Hut - but in teaching classes on liability at a community college, I've always taught that if an attractive plaintiff is 75% at fault for his/her own injuries, expect the jury to assess far less than that in comparative negligence. It's not right but it is the way it is and as long as civil litigation is simply for adjudication of monetary disputes instead of a search for the truth, that's how it always will be

Paul, 3 things we know for sure:
1) Human beings like to be alive and not dead. We have a survivor's instinct which means we don't generally love putting ourselves in harms way, unless we're stupid and drunk.

2) Corporations like to make profits and not lose them. They have a profit motive which means they don't generally love to take extra measures to spend extra money, unless they are stupid and drunk.

3) Everybody makes mistakes-human beings, corporations through the human beings that run them, etc. Corporations CAN and DO make mistakes where they prioritize the profit motive explained in point 2 over the human life motive referenced in point 1. When the do this, they must also face consequences for cutting corners and endangering lives for a few extra bucks.

You say: "You can put every possible safety procedure or device in place, and still there will be tragic construction accidents." But first they actually have to implement such safety procedures and devices. Like the article says, "Safety costs money." And if safety gets in the way of profits, then these companies don't put every possible safety procedure in place, or even every reasonable safety procedure in place. If they don't do this, then you might as well just stop there and focus on that problem before proceeding.

You also say: "Most of the serious accidents I've come across were the result of simple human error... As long as workers are inattentive or careless, these accidents will occur." How many serious accidents have you personally come across? Instead of automatically assuming that workers are too careless to be concerned about their own lives, let's think about the tremendous pressure some workers feel not to "rock the boat" and to be happy having a job because it's between that and letting their families starve. And this is especially true for the immigrant workers who have fewer options. And don't say, well they should just not come to this country. Because once again, their presence is often a function of 1, 2, and 3 working together, and their presence benefits our country more than it harms it.

How many serious accidents have you personally come across?"

Unfortunately Kia , the answer is way too many and about 90% of them occurred despite all of the available safety precautions.

No one can find evidence that a lawyer has ever enhanced safety. Tort litigation has no correlation with the epidemiology of accidents.

The principals always develop a technological fix to the safety threats to their lives, and their projects. The idea that people will only move to safety after being sued is self-serving, lying lawyer propaganda.

What the fear of litigation does is promote superficial safety measures, such as stupid warnings. In fact, the money stolen by sleazeball plaintiffs and cult criminals is money taken from safety development and enactment.

The lawyer further impairs safety by causing a cover up of evidence that would lead to enterprise destroying payouts. Instead of full and open investigation followed by remedies, one gets evasion and superficiality of incident reviews.

As to safety regulations, lawyers write these. So, its all paper shuffling. It's cult make work garbage. These make no contribution, except to cult criminal employment shuffling paper, and writing inscrutable gibberish.

Every preventable accident is the fault of the plaintiff bar, lawyer regulators, and biased judges promoting weak cases and frivolous claims to maintain lawyer rent seeking. These land pirates must be stopped if safety is to move forward more quickly. Safety will develop better once we loosen the strangle hold of the criminal cult enterprise over the three branches of government.