How you get killed is mostly irrelevant to the term "laying your life on the line". There is also a great deal that can be done to avoid job fatalities due to accidents. Workplace safety doesn't just happen and MOST accidents are avoidable except for official or unofficial workplace practices that put safety second to some short term target. Fatigue from working mandatory overtime, unofficial (but quite real) work policies that offer shortcuts that increase hazards, shoddy safety equipment, etc. all contribute vastly more to workplace deaths than true accidents due to an alert, sober, non-overly fatigued workers inattentiveness or sudden unexpected equipment failure due to unforeseeable circumstances such as casting voids weakening equipment in an unknowable way. True accidents are more rare than accidents caused by company policies that workers have no control over. A lumberjack most certainly puts their life on the line since they know that because of corporate cost cutting measures their job is more dangerous than it could be and even should be if they were allowed to follow actual policies. Calling them accidents hides this fact.
If for some strange reason you consider being deliberately killed by an assailant different from being 'accidentally' killed by a mine explosion this begs the question. Does the convenience store clerk earn the tag line "laying their life on the line" from you as well? Is getting shot protecting Kum & Go's cash somehow different from being shot trying to stop consenting adults from consuming drugs? Most cop shootings are drug related. Taxi cab drivers, convenience store clerks, pay-day loan clerks and closing retail managers are all more likely than a cop to be killed by an assailant for work related reasons. Cops are most likely to be killed in a vehicular accident chasing after someone who did nothing more than run a stop sign and in doing so are more likely to kill an uninvolved bystander than themselves. Cops kill themselves through reckless behaviour that endangers other far more than they are killed by evil-dooers. Cops kill more innocent bystanders than workers in any other occupation. They don't do so while protecting them from bad-guys either.
The US Labor Dept ranks on-the-job fatalities as follows:
Commercial Fishermen Timber Cutters Airline Pilots Construction Laborers Garbage Collectors Truck Drivers Electricians Gardeners/Landscapers Police Officers
The myth of hyper-dangerous police duties allows cops an excuse to treat people like shit. It helps build irrational fear of crime. It is believed by cops themselves and in all probability increases their likelihood to shoot first and ask questions later. None of these are desirable from where I sit. Thin blue line my ass.
John Thornton