Forklifts are not just toys, people.

These powered industrial trucks (PITs) are not to be messed with without some reasonable experience, or at least exhaustive training about what they can and cannot do, so operators do not put forklifts in a position to do something it is not able to do. That is where many problems exist, and where many injuries or deaths occur.

While there have beem about 19 work-loss injuries each calendar day due to forklifts (according to recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data), there are generally incidents that can be summed up in two case studies, featured in a recent Professional Safety magazine article by Christopher Janicak and Tracey Cekada.

That article was the basis for the last post, this one and several more to come, and it was centered around the hazards and dangers of forklifts and attempted to present some strategies and tactics to improve safety and reduce the number of incidents that occur from PIT operation.

The Case Studies

When it comes to forklifts, there are really two dominant ways in which injuries and deaths occur – from an error in driving a forklift that results in a roll-over or tip-over, and an incident where a worker is run over by a forklift.

The first case study cited in Janacak and Cekada’s article has to do with the death of a 17-year-old warehouse worker who was killed when the forklift he was driving tipped over and crushed him. The forklift had no load on it. The key here was that the worker tried to do a sharp right turn while driving the forklift, and the forklift did ot have the turn radius in order to execute the turn properly, and the PIT flipped onto its side, trapping the young operator under it. He died at the hospital about an hour after the incident occurred.

The second incident is probably not so surprising as tragic, as it involved a front-loading forklift. A 58-year-old man was run over by such a forklift in a lumberyard. The forklift was carrying a load of lumber, and with the load being in front, the operator had an obscured view and he did not realize he had hit anyone until hehad run the worker over.  There is no indication whether the worker was in the forklift’s area of operation and should have known to stay clear, or if the forklift was being operated in an unsafe area where there were workers who do not use heavy equipment. The worker who was killed was walking from one area of the yard to the staff lunchroom for a break when the incident occurred. The man died at the scene.

Knowing Standards

In the wake of these case studies, it would be instructive to pay a little attention to several OSHA standards that were created specifically for forklift operation, including a number having to deal with operators themselves. While there are several specialty standards based onthe type of PIT and the operators, the general operation standard is the most prominent, known as 29 CFR 1910.178. There are standards at 29 CFR 1917, 1918 and 1926 as well.

But the general forklift standard is the one most cited in OSHA violations regarding forklifts. The top 10 standards listed for violations during 2013 (the last year of full data) accounted for 64 percent of all citations (nearly 1,700), and all of the top 10 deal with the general standard 1910-178. Of those 10, six of them refer to training issues of forklift operators.

Hmmm, like maybe it’s not such a good idea to put an untrained person in control of a forklift? Maybe?

Anyway, the guidance here would be to make sure you have proper operator training for all of your drivers, and that might mean reading, knowing and understanding 29 CFR 1910.178, and make sure your operators know and understand it too, before you let them operate a forklift.

Next up, we’ll take a look at at some strategies designed to prevent injuries and incidents involving forklifts.