In article
,
" wrote:

sadly now and then even a professional lineman makes a mistake and
gets killed.

A few years back I caught a history channel (IIRC) show about the
history of linemen. In the early days, they lost a lot of them. Safety
was slow in coming to that industry, as it was in many industries. The
tools and methods evolved, sometimes faltering of course. Yep, it still
only takes a fraction of a second of inattention to get fried.

One cool thing I remember from the show was that a worker can now grab a
million volt line with a resistive grabber stick, and charge his body up
to that potential. Then work on the line all day with no gloves or
special tools. Speeds up many maintenance tasks tenfold or more.