Believe it or not, there are 110,000 major forklift accidents every year, costing businesses $135,000,000.00 every year!  Even worse, every year they cost more than 100 workers their lives.  It's easy to put off investing in safety, but it's extremely difficult to recover once an accident has taken place. And that brings us to Claitec.

Claitec is a technology-driven company specializing in the implementation of industrial safety and accident prevention solutions.  As we begin to introduce more solutions from the Claitec family of products, we'd like to highlight the Pedestrian Alert System (PAS) as a premier solution for forklift and warehouse safety.

The PAS comes with multiple devices that are synced to prevent accidents between forklifts and pedestrians.  When the pedestrian comes within an adjustable distance of 1 to 6.5 meters, the PAS will caution the forklift driver; and, if necessary, it will override the abilities of the driver as to not allow any dangerous situations.  

In order for a pedestrian to be identified, they must be wearing or carrying a transponder, known as an RFID tag, which communicates with the corresponding tag in the vehicle.  Once a forklift is identified as being too close to a pedestrian, flashing lights will appear in front of the driver, alerting him or her of the pedestrian.  The biggest advantages of the PAS are:

• Increased levels of prevention in high-risk areas.
• Increased supervision and protection of persons external to the workplace.
• Reduced number of accident compensation claims.
• Bargaining tool in the negotiation for reduced fees of insurance policies.
• Additional differentiation between obstacles and people not found in other comparable systems.

The most common areas of application for the PAS are in any loading or unloading zone, poor visibility areas, or work spaces shared by machines and pedestrians.  In loading and unloading zones, there are often people who are not familiar with the facilities, putting them at greater risk for an accident.  Poor visibility areas can represent places where forklifts and pedestrians may intersect, specifically near storage corridors and other junctions within a facility.  

Any facility where pedestrians share space with moving vehicles would be an excellent application for the product.  When space is limited and there is close proximity, like in a production line, safety can be enhanced by a tenfold with a PAS implementation.  Key features of the PAS include: