Comment by cpgxiii
6 months ago
Mining is heavily mechanized and automated already, yet remains inescapably dangerous.
Pragmatically speaking, when someone falls off a roof or a tree, it doesn't turn into a highly public, high-risk, government-responsibility rescue mission. When someone gets trapped in a mine, it does.
(If you fall off a tree logging in Alaska, there is a good chance a USCG helicopter crew comes to your aid, but that is more of a "five minutes in the local news" story than "nightly news host reporting live on location" event.)
I suspect the vast majority of deaths in underground mining in the US aren't from cave-ins but instead from heavy equipment accidents.
According to [1] there were 8 deaths in underground machine operators category in 2022.
There's a more detailed table at [2] but I don't quite understand how this aligns with the first one (the numbers seem different, but I think the category is "Mining (except oil and gas)").
In any case the majority of fatalities are from "Transportation incidents" or "Contact with object and equipment". I think cave-ins would be classed as "Fires and explosions"
[1] https://www.bls.gov/charts/census-of-fatal-occupational-inju...
[2] https://www.bls.gov/iif/fatal-injuries-tables/fatal-occupati...