A Smart Forklift Backup Alarm Can Save Operations and Safety Managers $188,000 in a Single Injury
A forklift backup alarm could be your ticket to a zero-accident workplace.
Forklift pedestrian injuries are a constant worry for operations and safety managers. A backup alarm could be the perfect solution to alert drivers and pedestrians of potential danger. When you’re thinking of safety alarms, there’s really two options available to you, traditional (dumb) alarms and smart alarms. Each has its own benefits and limitations. So let’s dig in and show you the differences; so you can choose the right solution for your facility.
What is a Forklift Backup Alarm?
A forklift backup alarm is typically an audio buzzer or alarm that sounds when a forklift is driven in reverse. These devices are used to warn and alert nearby pedestrians to prevent potential accidents with a moving forklift.
Forklift Backup Alarm: How does it work?
As soon as the operator engages the reverse gear or direction on a forklift, a specially installed buzzer or alarm receives an electrical signal to activate. The alarm continues to sound until the reverse gear or direction is disengaged.
Traditional Forklift Backup Alarm Challenges
Warehouse and factory workers are constantly bombarded by sounds and flashing lights. This leads to alarm fatigue and… you guessed it; people stop paying attention. When people don’t pay attention, that’s when accidents happen.
A traditional (dumb) alarm simply goes off whenever the forklift backs up, whether a pedestrian is nearby or not. If you’ve already tried these devices, you know that eventually no one pays attention.
Challenges with traditional (dumb) alarms:
❌ Too many false alarms, easy to ignore
❌ No near miss tracking or reporting to management
❌ No alerts to warn operators of pedestrian presence
So how do you make sure that forklift operators and pedestrians pay attention to the alarms?
You need smart alarms that:
✅ Go off only when a pedestrian is detected
✅ Warn an operator of a pedestrians nearby with audio AND visual alerts
✅ Capture information and report near misses to management
Smart Forklift Forklift Backup Alarms: Benefits
A smart alarming device prevents alarm fatigue. How?…smart devices sound an alert only when a pedestrian is present. As a result, operators pay attention and safety goes up. All of this, without increasing frustration for your operators and workers.
A Smart Forklift Alarm for Your Operations
One such type of smart forklift alarm is the SIERA.AI S3. The S3 provides the industry’s first vision-based smart forklift backup alarm solution that only goes off when a pedestrian is detected AND also reports near misses on a web dashboard. It differentiates between people and objects to prevent false alarms. As a result, there is no alarm fatigue for your people, and pedestrian safety risks are removed.
While there are multiple smart forklift alarm options available in the market, like Sonar to Lidar, they are less effective than machine vision.
Why?
Because both sonar and Lidar suffer from the same problem, they go off for pedestrians and any physical object since they cannot differentiate between the two. Therefore, you are back to square one with false alarms.
Should You Get a Smart Forklift Alarm on your fleet?
The answer depends on how your facility risk. If you have high pedestrian to forklift interactions, for example pickers, vendors or contractors walking in your buildings then a smart backup alarm is a necessity. If you have experienced a forklift pedestrian injury, then you already know that a smart forklift backup alarm is a no-brainer.
To figure out if you need a smart alarm or not, start by calculating your forklift safety score using our FREE Safety Score Calculator (see below). This calculator will help you uncover critical safety gaps in your operations and pinpoint the exact areas you need to work on to improve forklift safety.