The most common cause of fatal workplace accidents
It is sometimes necessary for workers to be in places where they are at risk of injury from vehicles and unfortunately preventable accidents still happen.
When they do, lost man hours lead to a slow-down in productivity, impacting on production targets and delivery schedules. But more crucially traffic incidents can be fatal. This has a devastating impact on family, friends and colleagues and huge consequences for the business concerned.
Over a five-year period, there were 4,944 accidents involving a work-related vehicle in the Republic of Ireland and under reporting means the true figure is probably three times higher. Vehicles on work premises continue to cause serious and fatal injuries. Being struck by a vehicle is one of the most common causes of fatal workplace accidents. Accidents often involve pedestrians being struck by forklift trucks or reversing lorries whose drivers are unaware of pedestrians nearby.
In Ireland, vehicles are involved in 45 - 50% of all work-related deaths reported to the HSA. In the ten-year period, 2010 – 2019 there were 217 work-related deaths where a vehicle was the centre of the work activity.
Incidents occur across a wide range of industries including agriculture, transportation, construction and vehicle repair. The vehicles involved include trucks, lorries, loaders, tractors and forklifts.
The effects are devastating for those involved. Injuries suffered include amputations, dislocations, complex fractures and worse. Over 25% of vehicle injuries led to workers needing more than a month off work, and many are left with life-changing injuries.
In the railway industry fatality risk when working near the running line/infrastructure is dominated by the hazards associated with working in close proximity to moving trains.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) estimates that lift trucks are involved in a quarter of all workplace transport accidents. In the UK, every day, five workers are hospitalised as a result of lift truck accidents and figures are similar in Ireland.
The most common working practices where fatalities occur are maintenance and loading and unloading. The majority of those affected are workers on foot, such as warehouse operatives. In forklift related incidents, nearly 75% of 'impact with a third person' events involve pedestrians that were completing tasks unrelated to the immediate truck operation, when the accident happened.
The term 'thermal comfort' describes a person's psychological state of mind as a result of how hot or cold they feel. There aren't any statistics available to know the scale of the issue, but it's recognised that people working in uncomfortably hot or cold environments are more likely to behave unsafely because their ability to make decisions and perform manual tasks deteriorates.
An independent field study has shown absence rates decreased significantly amongst construction workers wearing GORE-TEX clothing compared with those wearing conventional workwear. On average those wearing GORE-TEX clothing took 1.5 fewer days sick leave over the six-month study.
By protecting employees, you can be sure they can work efficiently whilst minimising exposure to traffic hazards. Workplace transport injuries are sadly likely to be fatal, so the costs of not implementing adequate vehicle and pedestrian control measures are huge and devastating for family, friends and colleagues.
As well as satisfying your legal responsibilities, taking the health and safety of employees seriously makes good business sense.
The costs of accidents are unpredictable but can be millions. On average one non-fatal injury costs employers €6,000. This cost is made up of lost productivity, health and rehabilitation, admin, legal costs and injury compensation payments. For traffic incidents, repairs to equipment and structures is often a big cost for companies. Both upstream and downstream operations can be affected, for example a forklift being out of action can significantly affect warehouse throughput.
Outside the workplace, the HSE estimates costs arising from 'at-work' road traffic accidents in the UK are in the region of £3 billion per year.
The fines and damages to help compensate can run into seven figures. A Veolia ES employee was run over by a reversing refuse collection vehicle whilst he was walking across the waste transfer yard in 2013. The company was fined £1 million and ordered to pay costs of £130,000.
In 2017, Moy Park food company was ordered to pay £878,300 in fines and costs after a yardman suffered injuries resulting in amputation of his leg due to inadequate segregation of people and vehicles in the yard.
The first step in reducing the chance of injuries in your workplace, is to identify vehicle hazards and the level of risk in each situation - consider traffic density, speeds, weather and surroundings.
With many years' experience, we can advise on hi-vis clothing for your site to help keep your people safe. Explore our clothing pages or get in touch if you need further support.
We sell a wide range of hi-vis clothing to suit all budgets and applications to ensure your employees can always be seen. We have it all, from premium quality GORE-TEX® to Arco Essentials; from waterproof jackets to polo shirts; flame resistant yellow hi-vis to railway approved orange hi-vis, for both women and men, plus branding options and a bespoke design service.
