Forklift Speed Control Vs Slowing Down the Vehicle
When evaluating a forklift safety system, we frequently get asked to discuss the difference between forklift speed control vs slowing down the vehicle. Many safety professionals or plant managers have shared that they believe slowing down the vehicle should solve the problem with the forklift and pedestrians coming in contact with each other. Is that true? Does it actually work? What is meant then by slowing down the vehicle? Let’s take a closer look at forklift speed control vs slowing down the vehicle.
Forklift Speed Control Vs Slowing Down the Vehicle
Let’s first discuss forklift speed control. This is about slowing down the forklift at particular areas within the facility. It is a system that says in this area, reduce the speed regardless if there’s a person or object there. And reduce it to this assigned speed. For instance, you may say, reduce the speed to 5 mph at the end of every aisle in the warehouse in anticipation of a worker crossing at the end of the aisle. That is basically what it says and does. Is this controlling accidents? It may provide some caution. However, when you are reducing the forklift speed at each of those aisles, we can say that it is reducing the amount of productivity.
Slowing Down the Vehicle
What is the difference between forklift speed control vs slowing down the vehicle? With slowing down the vehicle like SIERA.AI does with its forklift safety system, we are slowing down the vehicle if the forklift driver doesn’t adhere to the warnings. In our forklift safety system, we provide audio and visual warnings that a person or object is within the safety defined distance. If the forklift driver does not slow down the vehicle when the warning is provided, then our forklift safety system will override the driver and automatically start to slow down the forklift. This is a more effective solution as we are not affecting productivity. We are allowing the driver to do their job while our forklift safety system watches for pedestrians and provides the warnings. It is only if and when the driver decides to no adhere to the warnings that the forklift safety system takes over.
This type of a solution is provided by the request of the customer. We find that not all forklifts need to be equipped with the slowdown feature, our solution allows you to have a combination of the S2, S3 and S3 with the slowdown feature.
The flexibility of a single solution and with what the company needs at each of their location is the best way to solve forklift accidents. All of the data is then captured within the online telemetry Dashboard used to analyze the data so further safety action can be taken to ensure the ‘hot spots’ are identified and dealt with.
What’s Next?
Contact SIERA.AI at sales@siera.ai to view the entire forklift safety system so you can decide for yourself the level of safety needed for your facility. You can also view our videos to watch it in action.
Contact Us!
Contact us today at sales@siera.ai or call us at (512) 817 0702.