I work around forklifts.
No.
By virtue of there being a lot more of them cars are killing more people, but forklifts are far more dangerous, relatively.
More car accidents happen by virtue of there being a lot more cars than forklifts. There are about 35000 forklift injuries every year in the US, 90 or so are fatal. Of roughly 800,000 forklifts in operation that gives you roughly a 4% chance for serious injury from any given forklift per year. This does not include non injury accidents which, conservatively, happen at least 10 times as frequently. That would be things like dropping a load or damaging a safety barricade.
Motor vehicle crashes, and this includes everything from minor fender benders to fatalities, are around 6 million a year. Out of 285 million cars on the road that’s about a 2% chance per vehicle.
Forklifts aren’t capable of anything quickly. Less so under load. Loads are frequently unsecured or poorly secured. Unlike a car, they’re not only interacting with the road, they’re interacting with shelving, pallets of shit, conveyors, and the people around them, and the people driving them are just as likely to be drunk or stoned as anyone on the road is.
Of the 6 forklift incidents I’ve seen in the last 5 years, 2 involved a driver who was able to pass a drug test after.
1 was an injury, that individual lost her leg below the knee. The rest were all loads being flung in new and exciting ways, in one case throwing the operator forward out of the lift. (Standing lift). In all other cases that no one was injured was purely luck that no one happened to be nearby when it happened. Our facility is on the good end of the bell curve for forklift incidents. They’re much more common in other facilities.
9point6@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Well damn, I had no idea they caused that many problems, thanks for the reply