This is a pretty scary thing, you hear about warehouse accidents far too often. From the U.S. Bureau of Statistics each year 100 die, and 20,000 are injured because of forklift related accidents. The highest fatality being forklift overturns with accounts for 22% of the deaths each year. I read a lot of forklifts safety statistics here. I have also heard a lot about automating forklifts as well hopefully these kind of developments will help save lives.

It is common for forklift work to be pressure to perform. Often times the safety training takes place, however, speed then kicks in and operators fall to production pressure. The company can validate the training and the forklift driver is caught in the middle. Second to the loss of life, is the pressure on the operator. Most workers (of all kinds) do not feel they can say NO to production pressure. Each operator must develop their own system of safety based on the training and hold a hard line. This can minimize accidents but is no guarantee to be accident free.

Now this is one tragedy that should not have happened. OSHA put in the travel in reverse rule for a good reason and, behold, it parallels common sense. If the operator can’t see where they are going forward, drive in reverse. I, too, wonder about the training because this is really a fundamental forklift operating rule.