as elevator plunges 30 floors in China

Yikes, sounds like my worst nightmare!

Getting a taste of your own CHEEP manufacturing? Everything I have you made, is also broken! Sure you couldn't get a few more in there? Does this now mean there is under a billion of them?

"Work safety is a big problem in China, where regulations are routinely ignored." And of course, they don't have unions nor effective government regulations or regulators. And guess who wants that for America.

Ew. And I just had the Pressed Duck for lunch.

there's that great Chinese juggernaut again, I only hope we can rise up to such greatness in the near future

Now, explain how these workers and Chinese companies that are building our bridges instead of our own workers, have our safety at heart, when they cannot even keep their own workers safe. Tell it to the non-union temp worker who was 18 years old and made to work a punch press and lost the top four fingers on one hand when the safety gauntlets didn't work. I can still hear that young man screaming, smell the talc that they used to get the remains off the punch press the next day. Do not tell me that non-union shops have their workers safety and welfare at the top of the list. And why are we giving China foreign aid? Put that money toward what we owe them, and let our own people do the construction work on our infrastructure.

what an absolutely terrifying way to die.

And Willard Mitt Romney wants to loosen workplace safety regulations here in the U.S.!

I am not a member of a Union but I do not hate them. As a matter of fact a lot of them should be thanked for improving working conditions for me and every other person that has ever held a job here in America. Simply put they have improved working conditions and wages for everyone including nonunion employees by simply creating competition to keep skilled workers. If a nonunion shop wants to keep its employees it must offer similar wage structures & safety environments to compete with union shops. This is actually a good thing for all of us. If you do a little research you can see what working conditions were like before unions existed. It was a pretty dangerous and sad condition in a lot of instances. Unions changed that for the better for everyone.

I will be the first to admit there are some really ridiculous unions out there however to blame so many of our issues on all unions is just ridiculous.

Maybe they should send our OSHA guys over there to help out .....They certainly are not doing much around here except giving contractors a hard time.....Sounds like they could use their insight more than we can.

The investigation found there were a couple of chinks in the cable....but that was after it fell.

The headline should read 19 killed as construction elevator plunges 30 floors in China

-- otherwise the initial image that goes through most readers' minds is that of office workers in the elevator of a skyscraper.

The other 449 people in the elevator survived the fall.

I see the chinese are taking lessons in cramming more people in very little space from Mexicans who cross the border illegally

cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57477542/14-killed-in-single-truck-crash-in-texas/

Some people think it's much better to have 19 people fall to their deaths than have someone nit picked and bothered by pesky regulations over useless stuff like, oh, elevator maintenance records.

Nobody listens! I told them that a cable made out of rice would never support a heavy load!!

wao, what a way to die, crammed with another 18 people in a free fall elevator.

Must have been a activist in there or ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha made in chinkville........

As usual China doesnt give a hoot to worker safety. It throws the safety book out on any project and all it cares about is completion of the project. How else can it show off but with new and larger projects and sweep the dead to the side and shrug its shoulders as tho it is and should be a normal course of business expense. Such corruption is despicable and callous.

This is indicative of a lot of things in China it is still really a third world country with a fast growing economy. They struggle to impliment safety guidelines and quality. There are only a handful of companies there that put out a quality product and then you have the mass production of cheap junk.

It costs next to nothing to install an emergency braking system on these construction elevators. I should know; I've ridden on hundreds of them, up to 1300 feet one way.

That would be quite a ride. First, your stomach would get queasy as you start to drop. Then you’d achieve weightlessness and feel like an astronaut. Then you’d feel your head fly through your ass-pipe at several hundred miles per hour. Not to mention any equipment they were carrying hovering over their heads until the sudden stop. Must have been loud! Can you imagine the screams of terror? Like an enormous blood bag exploding… Have a nice weekend everyone.

We dont need no Stinking Regulations!!!

Vote Republinazi this fall Lord Willard wants to have a see how many middle class workers he can kill by removing those nasty commie Safety Regulations that cost jobs.

If Willard gets elected his first act will be to dress up a few out of work middle class people as pheasants and go on a pesant shoot with Cheney. Now thats just one more way Republicans can kill the middle class.

"Work safety is a big problem in China, where regulations are routinely ignored". Worker safety - a big problem. But I guess once the buildings are finished and occupied 'occupant' safety isn't a problem. Yeah, right...

When government controls everything (ie...you didn't build that, the government did...), there are no choices. Since there are no choices, there is no competition. Since there is no competition, there is no incentive. Since there is no incentive, the production and quality of work is shoddy. When work is shoddy, accidents happen.