Granted the jobs are meant to be dangerous…
I once met a Los Angeles City firefighter. he told me the most dangerous part of his job is driving to and from work every day or so.
A cousin in Indianapolis was a police officer for 20 years or so; after she retired from the force she said she never had to fire her gun except on the police pistol range.
And there must be plenty of veterans who have actually been in combat, but never got so much as a scratch, let along a serious wound.
How about it, Dopers? Anyone get hired as a police officer, firefighter, or whatever, and never actually get into a dangerous situation? (Despite what we see/hear on the news, I think the odds against actually experiencing danger are mightly high.)
Not a paying job, but I’m a volunteer firefighter.
I’ve been on several house/structure fires that were somewhat dangerous. On one townhouse fire, I went up the ladder (outside) to a third floor to get a woman out, with flames coming out of the second floor windows. (The other FFs were fighting the fire while I went up, but it was still kinda scary knowing the floor below us was burning.)
About 4 years ago, I was on a call for a gas tanker that had flipped over and caught on fire on the Beltway. That was probably my most dangerous call, not including dealing with stupid drunks at accidents. I’ve been assaulted by drunks twice.
The driving danger I see are the idiots who refuse to pull over for us when we are coming down the street with lights and sirens on.
I work with both my husband and mother-in-law in a little teeny office.
Oh wait, did you mean dangerous to me, or them? Because I will kill them eventually.
Here are the most dangerous jobs in America
[/quote]
- Truck driver
- Farm worker
- Sales supervisor/proprietor
- Construction worker
- Police detective
- Airplane pilot
- Security guard
- Taxicab driver
- Timber cutter
- Cashier
- Fisherman
- Metal worker
- Roofer
- Firefighter
[/quote]
These are from a site claiming that this comes from the US Labor Department’s statistics for on the job fatalities. Driving accidents were number 1, homicide was number 2. The third category is a bit misleading as this includes people killed in robberies, a lot of these are Mom -n- Pop kind of places hence the “Sales supervisor/propietor”, it probably includes the poor schlub working the late shift at the convenience / liquor store. The third leading cause of death was falls. That’s where a lot of the timber cutter, metal worker and roofer death comes in (FWIW I did hot roofing for a time; I quit because of an injury and seeing all of the injuries happening around me).
Police and Firefighters do make the list, but are not all that high on the list. This could be a function of percentages losing out to gross numbers, I am not sure.
Worked as a lumberjack before and never had any problems, even though sharp objects don’t get along with me well.
In my last job in weapons and explosive development, my predecessor had his arm blown off. Didn’t know that until I saw the tapes. I had a few close calls, but never got hurt. Took part in an arms dealing sting and didn’t get hurt.
Was in the service, jumped out of planes, and had a slight chute streamer, but it worked out. Had a harness failure on a SPIE rig but was 10 feet off the ground. Was nearly blown overboard on an aircraft carrier once.
Said stupid stuff to my wife many times and narrowly escaped with my life but always uninjured.
Walk down a city street one day minding my own business and get shot.
I’ve read that taxi drivers are more likely to be shot in the “line of duty” than police officers.
This is certainly true in Chicago.
It’s gotten even worse for them since 9/11, given that most of Chicago’s cabbies are Muslim
Well, I’ve done two of the ten most dangerous jobs according ShibbOleth’s list (taxi driver and cashier) and never had any brushes with death. Lucky, I guess.