Every year many workers at construction sites or warehouses are killed or seriously injured in forklift accidents.
Most forklift accidents are preventable. If you have suffered an injury in a forklift accident, you may be entitled to claim personal injury compensation.
The Most Common Causes of Forklift Accidents are:
• Forklift tipping over because the load is unstable. Loads are required to be arranged safely on the forks.
• Forklift falling sideways or dropping the load because the forks are being tilted forward.
• Forklifts hitting pedestrians because of over speeding or the driver’s vision being obstructed.
• Poor maintenance of a forklift causing hydraulic leaks in the mast or elsewhere. These often cause slipping hazards or lead to hydraulic failure.
• Poor work place designs such as narrow or crowded fork lift routes. Fork lifts and other traffic should be separated by a reasonable distance of at least three forklift lengths between them; there should be sufficient light in the traffic routes; forklifts should use flashing lights to warn workers and other forklift operators in the area; audible horns and alarms should be used as back up.
• Failure to look in the direction of travel lead to accidents.
• Forklifts overtaking each other at blind spots or intersections.
• Improper training given to forklift operators. Employers are required to provide forklift drivers with specific training depending on whether the forklift driver will be loading and unloading or working with hazardous materials.
Forklift accidents cause significant injuries mainly to the foot and this tends to be chronic. The majority of injuries caused by forklift accidents are to the lower limbs, foot and ankle regions but forklift accidents also cause death.
Most of these injuries are preventable. We have helped a number of
forklift accident victims get compensated.
If you have suffered an injury at work as a result of a forklift accident, you may be entitled to claim personal injury compensation. You should seek the help of a specialist
forklift accident claim solicitor.
Asiimwe Balinda
Personal injury solicitor