As have I, way back when I was watching some idiots with a small crawler trying to dig out a spring hole to make a little pond. They had an old "mucking bucket" that had two handles like a wheel barrow and appeared to be something that was made to be pulled by a mule or two. They had it rigged with about fifty feet of wire rope of dubious strength and with much sweat and cussing they had made some little progress. As they delved deeper into the muck thing came to a halt and the crawler was starting to lug down some. The property owner jumped behind the crawler and grabbed the cable as if to add his puny strength to the operation. I yelled to him to get the H### out of there and he stepped back as the cable parted at the bucket and faster then spit there was fifty feet of wire rope in an untidy ball right where he had been. We figured he would have lost both legs if he hadn't moved. The AH didn't even say thanks. After much digging they found the stump that had snagged their bucket.
As to the safety of hydraulics, energy is energy and power is power and it matters not whether it's tension in a cable or pressure in a pipe. If your focus strays for even a second when you should be paying attention you are risking injury or death. I've worked with hydraulics for over forty years and have seen a lot of near disasters. I've built test rigs and run them at pressures in excess of 100,000 PSI and fatigue tests to ten million cycles to verify strength requirements and still things break unexpectedly. When something literally breaks into pieces (pressure vessel failure) the pressure immediately dissipates and the worst that can happen is a shrapnel wound which is bad enough. Worse then that is if a hose develops a pin hole leak or a flange fitting stretches just enough to let out a flay fan shaped spray. Stuff like can cut you in half like a laser beam. If you've worked around earth movers you might know diesel engines. Part of the set up of the injectors is setting the "lift pressure" which involves a little test rig with a gage and a hand pump. You connect the injector to the test rig and pump it up, noting where the gage stops and a fine spray forms at the end of the injector. It looks soft and fluffy like a cotton ball. I saw a guy try to feel one with his finger as he pumped the rig up. Before I could say "stop" his finger was black and blue and grossly distended. The spray had broken the skin and he had given his index finger a subcutaneous injection of diesel oil. They wound up amputating the finger because there was no way to clean the oil out and his finger was infected. That was at about 1000 PSI, which is considered "Low Pressure" by most.
Electricians have a unwritten code they follow, "one hand for the job and the other in my pocket", not a bad idea.
Regards,
GtG