"You was not the first person to lose his life during construction of the EV plant and its suppliers. In April 2023, Victor Gamboa died on the megasite after falling 60 feet to his death.
Bryan County EMS records show in a 16-month period there were 53 calls for services at the site, including over a dozen for traumatic injuries. One of these injuries included another forklift accident, while one involved a worker being caught in a conveyor belt.
In March, prior to You’s death, a construction worker on the site went to the hospital after being seriously injured in a pipe explosion.
In May 2025, 27-year-old Allen Kowalski died on the HL-GA Battery construction site after a metal frame fell on him.
OSHA has opened at least 15 investigations into incidents at the site, including You’s death and the March pipe explosion."
This was the latest in a pattern of safety issues at the industrial site:
> Bryan County EMS records show in a 16-month period there were 53 calls for services at the site, including over a dozen for traumatic injuries
Which, lacking any other contextual clues, notably lessens the chances of this being directed malice by the worker, given an average time of 1.3 weeks between calls for over a year.
The combination of coincidences is striking: the CEO randomly decided to walk across the road, was wearing dark clothing, had an eyepatch on so he couldn't see one side of the road well, and was struck by a forklift while the operator was on the phone. (The operator then ran away without checking on the victim.)
Classic Swiss Cheese model. How many times did someone cross the road, wearing dark clothing, with an eyepatch on, but the operator was paying attention and successfully avoided them.
ok but also something is still not adding up here - sure the operator was distracted, but you a presumably functional CEO are crossing the road, and you cant hear a forklift moving/dont think to look like at all? these things dont move that fast esp on a worksite
Someone decided to walk across the road, was wearing dark clothing, had an eyepatch on so he couldn't see one side of the road well, and was struck by a forklift while the operator was on the phone.
What combination of coincidences is striking? People are careless all the time.
It would only really be a striking coincidence if each of these elements is a rare occurence - although if the site has a poor safety culture and this sort of stuff is happening all the time, it becomes less of a coincidence and more of an inevitability.
In the UK for example sites generally mandate hi-vis vests, establish pedestrian walk routes, ensure visitors can't walk straight into the warehouse without supervision or training, and ban using mobile phones when using any form of MHE - so if sites had good safety standards and enforced all this, then the chance of it happening would be much smaller than a site that didn't enforce all this (Just saying this is how it is in the UK as my experience all this is less common in the USA - although no doubt many sites operate the same).
If a site lets people wear what they want and does not stop MHE operators from using phones and lets a visitor freely walk around the warehouse... I don't know if a person getting hit at that stage is a coincidence IMO (regardless of the eye patch).
It may well be (and it certainly sounds it in this case), but I wouldn't always just assume profit > cost logic. When you're dealing with heavy machinery and machines that can kill with a half second of inattention or slip, then deaths will occasionally happen regardless of how careful you try to be.
It's all just a game of numbers. If something is 99.99% safe then that sounds great, but that means a failure rate of 1 per 10,000 which means you're going to see large numbers of those fails. This is why even in a society of perfect drivers you'd likely still see thousands of people killed in crashes each year. There's enough entropy, and a large enough sample, that deaths will always remain relatively high.
Funny here is not used in the humerous sense, but rather the other two definitions given in any good dictionary as "used to emphasize that something is serious or should be taken seriously." and "difficult to explain or understand; strange or odd." or even the given example of the last quote as "unusual, especially in such a way as to arouse suspicion."
Replace 'funny' with 'weird' (in a slightly sarcastic tone for sure) and the comment makes sense whilst being less offensive to the reader and not diminishing someones death.
When it's the CEO or if it's about silicon valley companies. I don't remember ever reading on HN about accidents in the shoe factory or in the construction site.
by forklift it can mean a "pallet fork" which is somewhat unlikly to kill someone, or monster that would squish a human like a bug.
driver probably caught a flash,too late, felt the bump,
glanced at the mess.....panicked
the bigger machines will flatten a pickup truck, and because the operators sit so high up, the smaller gear have masts flying flags.
the real irony would be if the forklift opperators phone call, was getting the gears from his supervisor for not bieng fast, enough.
In a lot of cases its perceived that its cheaper and faster to not "do" safety. Plus unless your leadership is fully bought in, or visible on the "shop floor" safety can appear like road blocks to productivity.
"any employee can say stop and the entire place stops?!" fuck that, they'll use it to skive off.
"oh we have to pay for PPE?" they'll just nick it.
I have worked at a place where a transformation happened because there was a death and number of grievous vegetative injuries. The C-suite got nervous that funding might be pulled so made safety a top-line company metric.
It took years to make a difference, but it also varies by region.
I know someone hit by a forklift because the operator didn't slowdown for the sections going out of the dark zones.
Forklift operators are careless all the time.
If you simply give them a chance by not being 100% safe yourself it might be fatal.
Forklift operators is, unfortunately, a job that needs go be taken by robots
It has in many cases already been taken by robots. Lots of warehousing is automated. But there are many situations requiring a forklift that are not well suited to automation. Basically anything that isn't dealing with neatly stacked rows and columns of shelves.
I worked night shift at steel processing plant once. Lots of my coworkers were walking around zombiefied. Forklift and crane operators were moving around 10-20 tons coils of steel and loading them into machines and people were paying no attention to them. Yes, the guy with 10 tons of product on his forks is responsible for paying attention, but the same rules apply as in traffic - right of way doesn't matter when you're dead. Pay attention and be aware of what's going on around you. Do not wear headphones!
Also CEO types on job sites, in my experience, often get to skip the mandatory safety course, because nobody dares tell them no and they feel big and important because they're wearing a tie and have shiny shoes. And these types need it the most, because they have zero experience working and moving around these types of places.
Somebody walking around on site without high-vis gear is a blatantly obvious violation. Somebody operating heavy machinery while talking on the phone is another blatantly obvious violation. They’re mistakes you don’t get without a pervasive culture of laxness towards safety. The fact there was a whole network of subcontractors on-site means that responsibility for on-site safety was too spread out for any real accountability to exist. Sounds like that site was a disaster waiting to happen, really.
People getting killed is never something to celebrate, but there is a certain degree of poetic justice in a company’s CEO dying to that company’s safety violations.
"The company was ultimately fined just under $10,000 for his death"
Wouldn't you rather have no fine? I'm know this is a strawman take but it SOUNDS like you can just pay 10k whenever an accident happens instead of preventing it.
"You was not the first person to lose his life during construction of the EV plant and its suppliers. In April 2023, Victor Gamboa died on the megasite after falling 60 feet to his death.
Bryan County EMS records show in a 16-month period there were 53 calls for services at the site, including over a dozen for traumatic injuries. One of these injuries included another forklift accident, while one involved a worker being caught in a conveyor belt.
In March, prior to You’s death, a construction worker on the site went to the hospital after being seriously injured in a pipe explosion.
In May 2025, 27-year-old Allen Kowalski died on the HL-GA Battery construction site after a metal frame fell on him.
OSHA has opened at least 15 investigations into incidents at the site, including You’s death and the March pipe explosion."
And there will be more
>The company was ultimately fined just under $10,000 for his death.
The cost is tooo low to prevent the company from protecting employees.
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Reminds me of Gabelstaplerfahrer Klaus (German):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDnOSW8cHjE
I was just about to share it too. Forklift driver Klaus is a classic. Here's one with english subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJYOkZz6Dck
Das ist schnell eskaliert.
This was the latest in a pattern of safety issues at the industrial site:
> Bryan County EMS records show in a 16-month period there were 53 calls for services at the site, including over a dozen for traumatic injuries
Which, lacking any other contextual clues, notably lessens the chances of this being directed malice by the worker, given an average time of 1.3 weeks between calls for over a year.
The combination of coincidences is striking: the CEO randomly decided to walk across the road, was wearing dark clothing, had an eyepatch on so he couldn't see one side of the road well, and was struck by a forklift while the operator was on the phone. (The operator then ran away without checking on the victim.)
Classic Swiss Cheese model. How many times did someone cross the road, wearing dark clothing, with an eyepatch on, but the operator was paying attention and successfully avoided them.
ok but also something is still not adding up here - sure the operator was distracted, but you a presumably functional CEO are crossing the road, and you cant hear a forklift moving/dont think to look like at all? these things dont move that fast esp on a worksite
There is probably constant noise on a worksite so there was nothing special to notice.
> The combination of coincidences is striking
Why?
Someone decided to walk across the road, was wearing dark clothing, had an eyepatch on so he couldn't see one side of the road well, and was struck by a forklift while the operator was on the phone.
What combination of coincidences is striking? People are careless all the time.
Timing and circumstance (especially the eyepatch.) It's basically a scene out of a movie.
2 replies →
> The combination of coincidences is striking
It would only really be a striking coincidence if each of these elements is a rare occurence - although if the site has a poor safety culture and this sort of stuff is happening all the time, it becomes less of a coincidence and more of an inevitability.
In the UK for example sites generally mandate hi-vis vests, establish pedestrian walk routes, ensure visitors can't walk straight into the warehouse without supervision or training, and ban using mobile phones when using any form of MHE - so if sites had good safety standards and enforced all this, then the chance of it happening would be much smaller than a site that didn't enforce all this (Just saying this is how it is in the UK as my experience all this is less common in the USA - although no doubt many sites operate the same).
If a site lets people wear what they want and does not stop MHE operators from using phones and lets a visitor freely walk around the warehouse... I don't know if a person getting hit at that stage is a coincidence IMO (regardless of the eye patch).
It's funny that these news only show up on HN when it's the CEO that gets hurt.
"Line worker dies because CEO decided security is bad for the bottom line. Company gets a wrist slap" is a "dog bites man" story.
When CEO dies for the same reason it's "the universe randomly hands out some justice" story, which is always a good story.
It may well be (and it certainly sounds it in this case), but I wouldn't always just assume profit > cost logic. When you're dealing with heavy machinery and machines that can kill with a half second of inattention or slip, then deaths will occasionally happen regardless of how careful you try to be.
It's all just a game of numbers. If something is 99.99% safe then that sounds great, but that means a failure rate of 1 per 10,000 which means you're going to see large numbers of those fails. This is why even in a society of perfect drivers you'd likely still see thousands of people killed in crashes each year. There's enough entropy, and a large enough sample, that deaths will always remain relatively high.
It's neither funny nor true.
eg: Tesla Doors: 15 People Have Died in Crashes Where it Wouldn't Open (18 hours ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46365597)
and a host of similar stories about worker / third party accidents and fatalities related to tech.
Funny here is not used in the humerous sense, but rather the other two definitions given in any good dictionary as "used to emphasize that something is serious or should be taken seriously." and "difficult to explain or understand; strange or odd." or even the given example of the last quote as "unusual, especially in such a way as to arouse suspicion."
Replace 'funny' with 'weird' (in a slightly sarcastic tone for sure) and the comment makes sense whilst being less offensive to the reader and not diminishing someones death.
When it's the CEO or if it's about silicon valley companies. I don't remember ever reading on HN about accidents in the shoe factory or in the construction site.
5 replies →
[flagged]
If you don't like HN, stop using it.
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Once he was off the forklift, he “ran away” without checking on You.
I don't think this is a matter of just fining the company. He should be subject to a criminal court.
by forklift it can mean a "pallet fork" which is somewhat unlikly to kill someone, or monster that would squish a human like a bug. driver probably caught a flash,too late, felt the bump, glanced at the mess.....panicked the bigger machines will flatten a pickup truck, and because the operators sit so high up, the smaller gear have masts flying flags.
the real irony would be if the forklift opperators phone call, was getting the gears from his supervisor for not bieng fast, enough.
[flagged]
Safety culture is fucking hard.
In a lot of cases its perceived that its cheaper and faster to not "do" safety. Plus unless your leadership is fully bought in, or visible on the "shop floor" safety can appear like road blocks to productivity.
"any employee can say stop and the entire place stops?!" fuck that, they'll use it to skive off.
"oh we have to pay for PPE?" they'll just nick it.
I have worked at a place where a transformation happened because there was a death and number of grievous vegetative injuries. The C-suite got nervous that funding might be pulled so made safety a top-line company metric.
It took years to make a difference, but it also varies by region.
I know someone hit by a forklift because the operator didn't slowdown for the sections going out of the dark zones. Forklift operators are careless all the time. If you simply give them a chance by not being 100% safe yourself it might be fatal.
Forklift operators is, unfortunately, a job that needs go be taken by robots
That's also why you wear high visibility vest and you let forklifts priority.
It has in many cases already been taken by robots. Lots of warehousing is automated. But there are many situations requiring a forklift that are not well suited to automation. Basically anything that isn't dealing with neatly stacked rows and columns of shelves.
I worked night shift at steel processing plant once. Lots of my coworkers were walking around zombiefied. Forklift and crane operators were moving around 10-20 tons coils of steel and loading them into machines and people were paying no attention to them. Yes, the guy with 10 tons of product on his forks is responsible for paying attention, but the same rules apply as in traffic - right of way doesn't matter when you're dead. Pay attention and be aware of what's going on around you. Do not wear headphones!
Also CEO types on job sites, in my experience, often get to skip the mandatory safety course, because nobody dares tell them no and they feel big and important because they're wearing a tie and have shiny shoes. And these types need it the most, because they have zero experience working and moving around these types of places.
Somebody walking around on site without high-vis gear is a blatantly obvious violation. Somebody operating heavy machinery while talking on the phone is another blatantly obvious violation. They’re mistakes you don’t get without a pervasive culture of laxness towards safety. The fact there was a whole network of subcontractors on-site means that responsibility for on-site safety was too spread out for any real accountability to exist. Sounds like that site was a disaster waiting to happen, really.
People getting killed is never something to celebrate, but there is a certain degree of poetic justice in a company’s CEO dying to that company’s safety violations.
"The company was ultimately fined just under $10,000 for his death"
Wouldn't you rather have no fine? I'm know this is a strawman take but it SOUNDS like you can just pay 10k whenever an accident happens instead of preventing it.