How to Calculate the Cost of Pedestrian Accidents

Pedestrian accidents come at a cost. And the cost of a forklift pedestrian accident varies differently if the person is injured or killed in the forklift accident. The results can be financially devastating for the company. If the cost of pedestrian accidents are so high, then why aren’t forklift safety systems installed…everywhere?

Cost of Pedestrian Accidents

Let’s talk some facts. The National Institute of Standards and Technology reported that an estimated $135 million in costs are incurred each year. Then add the costs from The National Safety Council. They state that forklift accidents costs on average $48,000 for each work-related disabling injury, while the cost for a single death averages $1.3 million. These are staggering costs for any company, large or small, to incur.

There are two types of costs associated with forklift pedestrian accidents: hard costs and soft costs. Most look at the hard costs, however, soft costs can linger for years and when added up, may cost more than the hard costs. Let’s take a further look at both.

Hard Costs + Soft Costs

Hard costs are those costs that can be easily identified with forklift pedestrian accidents such as insurance, worker’s compensation, medical charges, emergency services and medical costs that have not yet surfaced.

Soft costs creep up without notice. Sometimes we know about these costs from previous experiences which can help identify ‘what’s coming.’ These costs don’t necessarily come all at one time, but instead come over time. These costs that affect the company’s bottom line include accident investigation costs, legal fees, training costs, schedule delays, production delays, replacement worker(s), and damage to the facility or equipment.

List of Major Costs:

Let’s take a further look at the costs when a forklift pedestrian accident occurs:

Worker’s Compensation – the company pays approximately $35,000 to $40,000 in expenses per injured person

Repair & Damages – repair to the forklift, but let’s remember it had to hit something. This could be another forklift, piece of equipment in the facility and/or the infrastructure itself.

Loss of Workers – The cost of replacing the worker or workers is an added expense. But so are the cost of workers calling in sick, and reduced productivity because the workers feel unsafe. As a result, morale goes down. We just talked about this a couple weeks ago.

Loss to the Bottom Line – It goes without saying that the loss of an employee has a cost. According to industry reports, this cost is approximately $1,000 per person. In addition, consider the cost of management searching for a replacement, as well as trying to figure out what happened.

Legal Fees – Their time is spent on minimizing the company’s expenses; however, their fees need to be calculated as well. They don’t come cheap.

OSHA Fines – OSHA fines and violations need to be added in as well.

S3 Pedestrian Detection System

Pedestrian Accidents is what the SIERA.AI S3 Pedestrian Detection System protects you from. It’s AI machine learning technology knows the difference between a pedestrian and an object and alerts the forklift driver as such.

The forklift safety system will also provide a ton of additional information to help you determine other safety tactics that need to be implemented in the facility. One way is to track near misses and forklift impacts. Where are the near misses occurring? Where are the medium and high impacts within the facility? And is there a pattern with who was operating the forklift at the time. Once you know the answers, what changes can you make in order to provide a safer environment. If everyone is feeling safer, then doesn’t that help morale? Productivity?

Absolutely.

What’s Next

It’s time to talk with one of our safety executives. You’ll get way more information that can be stated in a short article. Contact us at sales@siera.ai to schedule a one-on-one consultation.