Watching a lift go smooth with just monitors left me thinking

I was helping on a site where the operator did everything from the cab using screens. He said it's faster and you don't need a guy on the ground. But my old boss always swore by having eyes on the load directly, saying screens can lie. Now I see points for both sides. How do you all handle your lifts, tech or a spotter?

2 comments

2 Comments

bell.emma8h ago

Yeah, saw a report about a near miss where the monitor camera got washed out by sun glare. Operator missed a power line because the screen just showed a white blob. They had a spotter, but he was looking at his own tablet feed. So much for redundancy. Tech's great until it isn't.

william_king7h ago

It's wild how often extra tech just means extra ways to fail. Reminds me of the time I relied on my phone GPS so hard I walked straight into a lamppost, lol. We set up these fancy systems but forget to just, you know, look up. Bet that operator feels the same way I did, just with way higher stakes. Makes you wonder if the old school way of just having eyes on the sky isn't still the best backup plan sometimes.