Hazard Without Harm: Are You Ready for Virtual Reality Safety Training?

By Karen Stratton

Are you ready for a new kind of safety goggles that will expose you to hazard, only without the harm, sitting safely in a classroom? Welcome to virtual reality for mine safety.

Without stepping off a plane or out of a pickup, you can set foot in a coal mine in the Powder River Basin on a sunny day, any season, in Wyoming. Place the goggles on your head and the controllers in your hands, and meet instructors Marty Brown, Vince Davis, Jayme Baumberger and director Jim Stratton, of Wyoming’s MSHA State Grant Program safety training virtual reality program. The instructors and director introduce you to the virtual reality goggles that lift training to a new level of safety to enhance your participation and most importantly, reduce injuries and fatalities in the coal mines. Virtual reality offers comfort in technology to miners with lasting teachings, unlimited scenarios, safe exploration and valuable feedback for instructors.

“With VR, we get 100 percent engagement in our classes. Students come out of the virtual environment with a greater awareness of the hazards they’ll face on the job,” says Davis.

Thanks to NIOSH and MSHA, Stratton and crew are bringing a new approach to safety training, successfully influencing students, progressing with technology and saving costs with their MSHA classes at the new Gillette Community College, in Gillette, WY. The program teaches over 3,500 miners and contractors each year with 24-hour new miner training and eight-hour annual refresher classes for certification and entry into mines. Coal, metal and non-metal miners receive this training. Learning by doing makes the realistic scenes more efficient for retention and implementation. Through hands-on experience, the VR uses movement and emotion to create enthralling scenes, making it easier for students to carry what they learned from the classroom back to the mine.

“VR gives the student/user an opportunity to experience a different world. As we go through the MSHA new miner classes, most of our contractors/new mine employees are dealt a great deal of information in a short time,” says Brown. “They will show up with the perception of mining. Some are close and some have a high level of WOW! A few folks need MSHA to be on a mine site but never interact with the mining process. Those folks may have no idea of what we are making reference to.”

He adds that “VR will take them out of their comfort zone and put them smack-dab in the middle of the one of the largest pieces of dirt-moving equipment in the world. It really adds to both the learning process and gives body to the hazard recognizing process. A phrase that I often use during MSHA annual refresher training is ‘all the hazards without the harm.’”

The instructors are committed to sharing the latest with miners on such topics as safety regulation updates, improvements in personal gear or a focus on silicosis, to name just a few. Another safety concern — cellphones and driving — is recognized by everyone in the mine and out of it.

Issue 2-2022 of the American Coal Council’s American Coal magazine addressed technology and social media in the article, “Building and Maintaining a Targeted Social Media Presence is Key for the Nation’s Energy Sector.” The article focused on social media for marketing presence and getting information out to the public about the coal industry. But here we look at another facet of technology: the VR program’s advantages for coal industry safety.

Younger miners are experienced with VR goggles from games. The skilled miners gain from VR by enjoying the novelty while seeing new perspectives. Keeping students alert in class is every teacher’s goal. Wearing the head-mounted display while watching a vehicle parked too close to a high wall elevates the realism, thus creating stronger emotions that result in powerful training results. The instructors benefit, too, from the interactive classes. They gain immediate feedback from observing students, leading to changes needed for clarity and adjustments in the programming.

“This is seriously an amazing teaching tool that we can use, bringing an actual awareness of the dangers in mining to the forefront of these individuals,” says Baumberger.

The program began experimenting with virtual reality in 2017 and has collaborated with programmers from the University of Wyoming in Laramie. Today, the grant programmers maintain and use 24 goggles suspended in a laboratory classroom at Gillette Community College Tech Center. In addition, instructors can check out up to 45 oculi — mobile goggles — for classes held out of town in communities throughout the region.

On a recent day, programmers created light-duty pickup hazard recognition and fire extinguisher inspection VR lessons specifically for Thunder Basin Coal Company, south of Wright, WY. Thunder Basin miners were virtually dissecting fire extinguishers without risk. Working with PhD candidate Clint Kling from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Gillette College helps students in MSHA classes to measure their retention and comprehension. Kling hopes to demonstrate profound improvement with the data collected. In addition, the Wyoming grant crew is joining the Kansas MSHA State Grant program developing hazard recognition for conveyor belts there. All MSHA State Grant programs fall under the Department of Labor Mine Safety and Health Administration rules, regardless of region. MSHA requires mandatory mine tours for all new miners in the 24-hour classes before they are allowed into a mine.

In Wyoming, scheduling mandatory mine tours can be difficult. Physical challenges due to road conditions, distances and heavy truck traffic make a virtual mine tour a safe alternative to the on-site tour. The VR tour can be more in-depth than driving to a platform and pointing to the dragline far across the pit. Goggles give the student an opportunity to climb up the boom of the dragline safely. Another VR lesson aims at blind spots from the different types of mining equipment. Not all miners have access to all equipment. Participants can climb into a hardy, 240-ton haul truck, motor grader, loader, dozer or their choice of many different pieces of heavy equipment they would like to try. Sitting in the various cabs with 360-degree views means a push of a button on the controller positions them next to six other employees near the machinery, but who are not visible from windows or mirrors in the cab. This training demonstrates the dangers of blind spots. The mine tours through the goggles may bring up red flags that can be seen when a miner goes back to work.

“I found the blind spot training excellent. It was as if you were literally in the equipment. I feel it was effective in making one operation safer,” said student Nathan Mullinax, president of Mullinax Sand & Gravel.

VR also provides an option for simulation and mock-up drills. Without re-enacting, which can be dangerous, VR offers an alternative for the mine rescue crews without loss of man-hours and the price of props.

The MSHA State Grant Program began in 1977 with the creation of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. Gov. Mark Gordon recently awarded the Wyoming MSHA State Grant program to Gillette Community College.

Wyoming is home to approximately 169 mines, including 11 coal mines in the Powder River Basin surrounding Gillette. Nationwide, MSHA inspections, two annually for surface mines, four for underground mines, ensure safety precautions are followed. Citations can be costly, but nothing can compare with the loss of employees in hazardous events. Over the past 45 years, the number of fatalities has dropped from 242 in 1978 to 29 in 2022.

“MSHA continues to work to reduce injuries, illnesses and death through strong enforcement as well as active outreach, education and training, and technical support to the mining industry,” says the U.S. Dept. of Labor’s MSHA website. “MSHA’s State Grants Program distributes federal grants to 49 States and the Navajo Nation. Grants are made to the state agency program responsible for miners’ health and safety.”

With the Wyoming program, district industry safety training staff are ready to support miners, making safety training with virtual reality goggles a fun and constructive hazard, without the harm.
“The VR goggles are unbelievable,” said student Adam Paulson, production manager at Mullinax, Inc. “Being able to put you in those large pieces of equipment from a classroom is incredible. They really put things in perspective.”