September 26, 2017
As it should, safety superseded speed during the forklift rodeo portion of the Blue Mountain Occupational Safety and Health Conference this past June in Pendleton, OR.
Winner Chris Evans, a forklift operator for Elgin Plywood in Elgin, OR, appreciated organizers’ efforts.
“They reinforce safety by constantly telling you to look over both shoulders while not looking up, keeping your seat belt on, exiting the forklift with three points of contact and not driving with the lift up,” Evans said.
Those are just a few best practices that can be used to foster forklift safety on the job. Safety+Health consulted safety professionals, agency officials and the National Safety Council to help shape the following five forklift safety guidelines.
OSHA estimates that 35,000 serious injuries and 62,000 non-serious injuries involving forklifts occur annually. Further, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that 96 U.S. workers were killed in incidents involving forklifts in 2015.
A safety guide published by the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries states that workers without proper training and knowledge of forklift operation, as well as operators who maneuver forklifts carelessly, have an increased risk of injury or death.
A commitment to safety begins with proper training. The guide further states that “an untrained forklift operator can be as dangerous as an unlicensed driver of a motor vehicle.” OSHA’s Powered Industrial Trucks Standard – 29 CFR 1910.178 – establishes that “the employer shall ensure that each powered industrial truck operator is competent to operate a powered industrial truck safely, as demonstrated by the successful completion of the training and evaluation” outlined in the standard.
OSHA requires training programs to combine formal instruction, such as lectures and written material, with practical training and a workplace performance evaluation. Washington L&I Safety and Health Technical Specialist Drew Kertzman said that a prevalence of qualified experts and resources has allowed for improved training in recent years. Still, operators should be mindful of the differences between various types and models of forklifts and lift trucks.
“The gap that I’ve seen in the past is just presuming that once you’re trained on one forklift, you automatically know how to maneuver all forklifts,” Kertzman said. “As you get larger and larger (forklifts), they operate differently, and as you go from model to model, they are a little bit different.”
Read more at SafetyandHealthMagazine.com
