Ah, good old Elfin Safety. IMHO, there's nothing wrong with taking a common sense approach to safety.
If you're going up a ladder and there's a stiff breeze, tying the ladder to something is just common sense. Being required by law to have a certificate that certifies the holder is capable of climbing a ladder is stupid. I once had to change out a small computer box which was tucked behind a TV mounted 5ft up on the wall. Even though I'm a handy 6ft 4ins tall, it was just too far in the middle of the bracket for me to reach. So I asked if the company had a step-stool or small set of step ladders I could use to get the extra foot or so off the ground I needed to be to reach it.
"Have you got a certificate for working at height?"
"Err, no."
"Sorry, can't let you do it then"
"I've got a high-viz jacket, some hobnail boots, a couple of road cones I liberated from the M6 one drunken student night and a flashing yellow light I could stick to the top of my hard hat - all in the back of the car, if that would help?"
"[silence]"
Turns out a bloke had had an accident in their warehouse a week earlier, and had died as a result. thus the Health & Safety Executive (the Government body responsible for making sure forms are all filled out correctly, certificates are checked etc.) were crawling all over them looking to pin liability on the company; so, they were taking zero chances & had lost their sense of humour over H&S matters.... Oops.
But anyway, I digress from my point, which is: Health & Safety (or OSHA or whatever your local acronym is) is an attempt - usually over-zealous and wrong-headed - to codify common sense. You generally won't go up a 40ft ladder that's resting against the side of a building to try and fix a gutter (for example) if there's no-one around to assist you, the ladder isn't tied up, and it's blowing a gale outside... and if you do, then you're a plonker who deserves to be permanently paralyzed when you hit the deck at high speed.
Open flywheels? OMG! A HSE man's wet dream... now he can require (with the force of law behind him) you to put guards around them, stickers all over the place warning of the dangers, painted "no-go" zones on the floor (unless you've appropriate training & certificates to prove you can stand next to a running open-flywheeled engine without feeling the need to stick limbs, ropes or long hair into the spokes to ascertain whether it's running or not) and so on.
It made me laugh, one time, watching a "Making of..." documentary about an episode of Dr Who (for those who don't know it, weren't you ever a child???). The entire cast and crew were shown milling about doing various stuff (I think they were discussing how to animate some scarecrows) in their civvies (or costumes, for the actors) - 2 H&S reps in hi-viz, hard hats, boots etc. On a fucking FILM SET! In a FIELD! The only thing a hard-hat would save them from is falling aircraft ffs!
Unfortunately, though, we'll never be rid of the scourge of H&S. As long as ambulance-chasing lawyers are allowed to frivolously sue companies for negligence because a dumb employee did something dumb and hurt his/her self (and here in the UK, employers CAN be sued by employees), an entire industry will continue to feed greedily off of companies desperately trying to cover themselves from stupid claims. IMHO there should be an escape clause for all industrial accidents: If the employee was doing something so incredibly stupid that no-one on a jury would copy him, then the company should be absolved of liability - UNLESS the employee was directly ordered to carry out whatever action it was by a dumb-arse manager (who should take the rap instead) on threat of loss of employment.