This week, senior writer Jessica Mathews published her investigation into the safety record of Boring Company—Elon Musk’s tunneling operation valued at $5.6 billion that has built an underground connection between the Las Vegas Convention Center and Wynn and Encore resort on Las Vegas Boulevard.
She found that during a six-month period last year, 36 injuries across Boring job sites were reported to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, ranging from heat exhaustion to knee or head contusions to limbs being crushed. An investigation by OSHA in the summer found that employees at the company’s Encore project site were exposed to “potentially serious injuries or, in some cases even death,” Jessica reports.
One former executive told her that tunnel projects are inherently dangerous but that “Boring—the way they operated with a lack of safety focus, created a greater risk of serious injury or death than you would see at another construction project. But fortunately no one has died. I don’t know whether they have just gotten lucky.”
It took Jessica months to report this story, speaking to the company's ex-safety manager and nine other former employees, and combing through thousands of pages of public records, including OSHA investigation notes, photographs, videos, and texts and emails between employees and the company’s management.
Jessica’s Boring investigation is flat-out excellent journalism, the kind that has given Fortune its reputation for the last nearly 100 years. Give it a read here.
