No Guppy, sadly I am not. You are perhaps unable to compare risks to employees in different industries as you have been dedicated to mainly the one I assume?
I know you may be thinking well what difference does a landyard make and if it is too long might it not get hung up and wind him in, but something has to be there to stop this happening.
You may even be thinking what is the difference between this and walking out into a road in front of a noisy bus - no landyards for pedestrians, eh? Well revving buses usually move and cannot cause harm in invisible ways when they are stationary.
It might surprise you that in the construction industry in London you will rarely see a ladder thesedays because workers are generally required to use safer means e.g. MEWP (...work platform) to access heights even though it costs ridiculous amounts in extra kit. I was surprised when I learned it. Once they are in said MEWP with rails around them they are still trained to wear short lanyards to harnesses in case something odd occurs and they might otherwise topple out.
I read that in London recently, the government Health & Safety Executive conducted lightning inspections on random sites and applied temporary closure orders on half of them. Perhaps a shot over the bows in the lead up to massive London 2012 construction which is about to go exponential.
Similarly, no risk such as the one we are discussing would be conducted without there being a proper written risk assessment by qualified persons, including the provision of a method statement and if it was seen as a risk of certain death like this if procedures were not followed closely, then I think it would requre a special written permit by a site safety chief for every occasion it was undertaken. Maybe the problem is that all these things are done but they are seen as obligatory aviation aircraft safety control documents like all the other aviation engineering documented systems and not as anything designed specifically to safeguard the workers.
I don't blame you for being surprised, but the world has moved on in some industries more than others. Trained individuals are responsible for their own safety of course but we are all responsible for each other's safety too. It's supposed to work like the security model (onion layer thing).
If we can't stop accidents like this by training and procedures then that's when authorities start insisting on physical restraints.
Expect changes.