Forklift Injuries Reported by the NSC from 2011 to 2020

Forklift injuries are calculated and tracked each year by the NSC or the National Safety Council. The National Safety Council is dedicated to eliminating the leading causes of preventable deaths. As a result, the not-for-profit organization charts various safety trends including lift trucks. Let’s take a look at some of their reports.

Forklift Injuries from 2011 to 2020

According to the NSC, the total nonfatal or work-related injuries and illnesses involving days away from work are as follow.

• From 2011 to 2020, the number of injuries grew 19%
• Year with the largest number of injuries was 2019 was 8,140
• In 2020, the largest age group with the greatest number of injuries were between the ages of 35 to 44 with 1,680 injuries. However, following a close second place are the 45 to 54 age group with 1,570 injuries.

2020 was the second lowest time 16–19-year old’s were injured with a forklift. The most was in 2013 with 510 injuries. This is a very young age group.

Forklift Injuries with Length of Service with Employer

This was a surprise reveal that was completely unexpected. The length of service that a person had with an employer before having an accident was 5+ years of service. However, in 2019, the most accidents occurred in the 3 months to 11 months of service.

Forklift Injuries Time of Day

The time of day when most forklift injuries occurred was between 8:01 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. This was the same timeframe from 2011 through 2020 with the exception of 2019 when most injuries occurred between 12:01 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. The number of hours worked before an injury coincides with time of day. From 2011 to 2016 and 2018, the number of hours worked was between 2 – 4 hours. In 2017 and 2019, it was 4-6 hours of work and 2020 6-8 hours of work.

Ways to Reduce Forklift Injuries

What are some of the ways we can help the forklift operators from getting injured? Here are the top three suggestions.

1. Targeted training. Many managers start from the beginning and retrain on areas that are doing well. It’s better to identify and target weak areas so the operators can get better.
2. Get a forklift safety system for all of your lift trucks. The safety system should include a digital forklift checklist for OSHA compliance and to ensure proper operation of the lift truck, a pedestrian and object detection system so the operator can be alerted to a pedestrian within a dangerous vicinity.
3. Telemetry Dashboard. The safety system should also be monitoring, tracking and real-time reporting on near misses and low, medium and high impacts. This gives you patterns. Patterns on behavior, patterns on areas that are high(er) risk for an accident.

This is what brings training and technology together. Now with the use of the results of technology, you can target operator training for better safety, efficiency and productivity.

Next, contact us at sales@siera.ai. Our S3 Pedestrian Detection System will reduce forklift accidents AND give you the telemetry Dashboard to report real-time actionable data. Give it a try.