Paying Lip Service To Safety Is No Longer Enough
Peerless Research Group recently published a new Lift Truck Acquisition and Usage study that produced some interesting insights into how lift trucks are acquired, managed, and maintained. For example, when evaluating the new purchase of a lift truck, the top three considerations for new buyers are the price of purchase, the quality of the lift truck and its parts, and, finally, safety.
However, even though safety is one of the top three considerations for organizations, the study shows that future purchases of safety equipment ranked 8th on the priority list for buyers. Unfortunately, these results won't surprise many workplace safety professionals and demonstrate an issue they have battled with for years.
Many organizations name safety as a top priority and consideration but then don't invest in it. Instead, they acknowledge the importance of safety and tout its significance in meetings but struggle with allocating the necessary funds to invest in safety equipment and initiatives.
Regulators do not share the same hesitance toward safety progress and are increasingly saying that companies must do more to protect workers. In 2020 in the United States alone, forklifts killed 78 workers, and a third of those were pedestrians.
Lift trucks are critical to the operations of countless businesses worldwide, but they also pose a considerable threat to worker safety. Many organizations rely on traditional passive safety systems to keep their people safe while working in or around lift trucks. However, these systems don't do enough to prevent accidents; active safety systems are necessary.
Protecting workers from lift trucks
Lift trucks pose a real, measurable threat to worker safety. Passive safety systems protect forklift operators by mitigating the consequences of an accident, with operator cages and seatbelts being the most common examples. These systems have saved countless lives but are only part of the equation.
Passive safety systems lessen the impact of an unavoidable accident, but they don't prevent them. In contrast, active safety systems attempt to prevent accidents before they occur. They are a modern, proactive approach to accident and injury prevention.
Pedestrian detection sensors are one of the best examples of active safety systems on the market today and protect workers in and around lift trucks. Sensors prevent accidents by detecting when an obstacle or pedestrian enters a hazardous zone and audibly alert operators so that they can take evasive action.
Pedestrian detection sensors prevent accidents by increasing equipment operators' awareness of their surroundings. Unfortunately, a pressing issue with many sensors today is that they do not provide visual proof of what has occurred. When the goal is to prevent accidents, this evidence will help leaders make more intelligent choices on how to avoid them.
Improving safety requires better information
Information is king, and more and more organizations are demanding better data and analytics from their safety systems. It makes sense; data helps leadership make more intelligent decisions about the health and safety of their business. It can also shift their training, support, and tactical goals and allow them to focus their time and energy where it is the most impactful.
Also, the most effective safety and health programs do not just react to accidents. Instead, they prevent them before they occur. Finally, having reliable data about the hazards in your workplace is the best way to gain insight into your operations and helps leaders predict where the next accident may happen and how to avoid it.
Every time a pedestrian detection sensor goes off; there is the potential for a severe or fatal accident. While the sensor did its job by avoiding an accident, continuous improvement demands we pinpoint the cause and eliminate it to prevent reoccurrence.
Unfortunately, many still take the outdated approach that if there are no negative consequences, there is no problem. Also, because many sensors provide no evidence of the near miss, it's easy to disregard its potential severity. For that reason, visual proof is the crucial next step in the evolution of pedestrian detection sensors.
With video, you can easily show management irrefutable evidence of how close a severe or fatal accident really was and how often they occur. You can quickly demonstrate the reality of the situation and how taking additional steps may prevent a tragedy. These videos make a solid argument for management to invest more in safety policies and equipment. They can also be a learning tool to demonstrate what not to do and current compliance.
How SEEN Safety is changing things
A significant problem with many pedestrian detection sensors today is that they are overcomplicated when the most effective solutions are often the simplest. SEEN Safety's IRIS 860 pedestrian detection sensors painlessly integrate into any work environment and detect one of the most common pieces of personal protective equipment, the high visibility vest, making them effective from day one.
SEEN Safety's IRIS 860 Sensors have been a top performer for years, and now the recently released system - SEEN Insight - provides real time first hand insight into the frequency and context of people in critical risk zones around forklifts and other mobile equipment. When the sensor detects an event, the IoT camera captures an image as well as event data which can be viewed on the SEEN Insight app.
SEEN’s safety sensor and SEEN Insight make an indispensable team. Together they provide strong visual evidence and powerful analytics giving real insight into incidents and near-miss events. SEEN Safety's sensors are simple, effective, affordable and have reliably protected pedestrians all around the world. Stop paying lip service to safety, take your workplace safety to the next level. Contact us today.