Poor bugger, he's in a real bad way, real bad.
See, when I left high school I got an apprenticeship with a large company, GMH, and we were taught safety all the time.... all machines had a padlock lock off for maint etc.
But for a lot of people, they might get a job in a small place or just start helping a mate or relative.
These guys pick up bad habits and dont have the full scope nor the impact of watching what happens to people in industrial accidents ... things like, long hair caught in a pedestal drill, a foot ran over by a fork truck, using a large 300mm pedestal grinder with GLOVES on and your hands get sucked in up to your arms and ground off etc etc etc ...
Larger companies have a lot of pressure on them to train and have policies and procedures. Small tree crews or two man bands just dont have those resources. It's pretty much up to the individuals to learn out of curiosity for safer ways, but some have little enthusiasm for it. Then this happens, and in our game it can happen every day, you detach you are taking a huge risk.
I had a guy come climb for me one day on trial. I asked him to clean a palm. He spiked up (one lanyard) but it had a large head he'd have to get into. So he hooked his arm over a frond, detach from the trunk, re-attached thru some fronds... same on way down but it took a few flicks of the lanyard for him to catch it.
When he spiked all the way down I asked him what the go was and he said that's how he was taught by his old boss.
You see a problem here? Besides his old boss being an idiot this guy had little common sense. I asked him why he didn't have another lanyard, rope lifeline etc ... he said they cost too much.
In this job you might get away with that 100's perhaps 1000's of times but one day if it goes wrong you are stuffed. It's a shame this job isn't more regulated, if there were a licencing system and skills had to be learned plus displayed then we'd have not only safer workers but more profit as short cuts are out and the extra will have to be charged for the time to do it the right way.