On Behalf of Simon & Gilman, LLP | Sep 3, 2020 | Firm News |
New York workers like you deserve a safe place for employment. Unfortunately, some industries are more risky than others by default. And even worse, there are some instances where risks already present in an industry are not addressed.
This seems to be the case for falls in the construction industry. The actions of others can keep you from being as safe as possible.
Fall injuries in construction
The National Safety Council keeps track of slips, trips and falls in workplace industries. Of these individual industries, the field of construction has the most injuries and deaths. 24,700 of the 48,060 injuries happened in construction. Likewise, 384 of the 697 deaths took place within the industry, too.
This cannot just get written off as a result of the heights at which you work, either. Many workers fall and suffer from injury or even death while working on ground level. So why do you face such an elevated risk?
The causes behind fall accidents
The unfortunate truth is that almost every fall incident is preventable. Most of the reasons for a fall could have gotten addressed long before the fall happened, and include:
- Workers not having access to updated safety training
- Heavily used or broken equipment not getting replaced
- Workers feeling pressure to put speed over safety
- A lack of emphasis on following safety protocol
- A lack of proper safety equipment
In many cases, higher-ups will try to force workers to churn out twice the work in half the time. While encouragement to buck safety standards is not always explicit, it is a feeling many construction workers pick up on. This and cutting costs by keeping old equipment are enormous factors in these potentially deadly incidents.
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