As much as it hurts us to report news like this, we feel it’s important to recognize areas where we all can improve in an effort to achieve our goal of preventing fatal accidents in the workplace.

On Tuesday, January 24^th, a Stop & Shop Distribution employee was killed in Stoughton, Massachusetts.  As a tractor trailer pulled away from a loading dock, the man fell between a truck and the dock.  After the man fell, a forklift that was unloading merchandise from the trailer fell on top of the man, taking his life.

According to news sources, first responders arrived at the scene to provide first aid, but the man was pronounced dead at a local hospital.  Although no additional details have been provided, OSHA has confirmed that they have launched an investigation into the incident and we anticipate that they will be able to turn the tragedy into a learning lesson to prevent this type of accident from ever occurring again. 

MassCOSH has reported that this is the 21^st forklift death in the New England region since 2007.  In response to the accident, the National Safety Council has released the following recommendations to prevent future occurrences: 

• Employers should prohibit forklifts from loading dock locations that do not have protective edge barriers.
• Employers should consider installing barriers at loading dock edges to minimize the possibility of employees and equipment from falling off the dock.
• Forklift manufacturers should implement the concept of Prevention through Design, and redesign the operator area of standup counterbalanced forklifts to include restraint systems.

We are in business to help the effort to prevent these types of accidents.  That’s we we’ve spent so much time invested in finding quality products that can be integrated into the forklift and warehouse environments to prevent injuries.

Those products include the Pedestrian Alert System (PAS), a product that has been engineered to caution the forklift driver when a pedestrian is within a distance of 3 to 20 feet.  PAS utilizes RFID sensors to aid in the highest safety practices within areas where your forklifts roam.  Other products include the Low Speed Area (LSA), which properly adjusts the speed of the forklift in any given area, and Hazardous Areas (HA) that allows you to monitor the safety of your employees around certain areas that are deemed more risky, such as the compactor or baler.

No matter what your forklifts are loading and unloading, we have a product to help ensure safety in your warehouse.  Please help us remove these news stories from the press by preventing these accidents in the first place.  We are determined to make sure you have every resource available to help you keep your employees safe 

For more information about the MRES product line, please contact one of our specialists today.

http://ehstoday.com/forklift-crush-mass 

http://www.safetyandhealthmagazine.com/articles/15167-facevalue-operator-dies-when-forklift-falls-off-loading-dock