Ignoramus16121 wrote in
:

I would, personally, like to know how the investigation turned out.

A tape measure falling from 50th floor, is not a steel ball in a
vacuum. First of all, it is slowed down by air as it falls.

Not very much, it won't, probably not as much as you think. Dense, more-or-less-smooth
objects (such as tape measures) aren't affected by air friction nearly as much as low-
density, high-surface-area objects (such as paper or feathers).

Secons, if
it "ricochets" at a significantly small angle, it would shatter or, at
least, slow down substantially from a ricochet.

How much it slows down from the ricochet depends on how much of its energy from the fall
is absorbed in denting either the case or the object it hits. Certainly it will slow down, but,
again, probably not as much as you think.

So, I suspect, it was still falling down nearly vertically when it hit
the worker. As such, a hard hat may have prevented his death.

A hard hat is even more likely to have prevented his death in the case of an extremely high-
angle ricochet.

I do not wear hard hats daily, but I do wear them at least once every
week.

Let us know what the result of the investigation is.

Knucklehead left his hard hat in his truck when he walked onto a construction site where
(presumably) hard hats were required, and falling objects are an obviously foreseeable
hazard.

Unless it can be shown that someone on the high steel saw the lack of helmet and
intentionally pitched the tape toward him to teach him a lesson, the only reasonable
conclusion possible is that his death is sad, but nobody's fault except his own.