Actually the safety portion is written by customers. The safety alerts mean somebody did that, sued the manufacturer, and the manufacturer lost. So legal tells tech pubs to put an alert in the manual so next time somebody does it I can point to the manual. We will still need to pay damages but the judge will overrule the jury and reduce the amount because we had it in the book. Large companies get large safety sections because a skid steer will have a warning resulting from a mine truck driver getting out of their truck to take a leak letting the truck roll off a cliff and crushing the managers pickup.
But among all that we try to fit in what is really important too, not that the safety stuff isn’t. But it seems like it’s common sense to set the parking brake when you get out to take a leak. And you won’t believe how many kids have climbed on the tractor and turned the key when dad was working on it. So companies usually say to turn off the key and remove it. We first started that at Allis-Chalmers when a 4 year old started a combine, in gear, while dad was in front cleaning it out. Watching her father die in front of her - no way can you win - but you need to warn.
