 Home Health and Safety Health and Safety News
Falls from vehicles - HSE researches the causes
25 August 2007
The Health and Safety Laboratory has reviewed over 250 falls from vehicles reported under RIDDOR over the last 5 years.
The report looks at a number of factors associated with the accident reports such as safe systems of work, type of vehicle, the part of the vehicle from where the person fell, what they were doing at the time, the location of the vehicle and other contributory factors.
Failures in safe systems of work were the most significant factor. The lack of a safe system of work or inadequate risk assessment were problems in almost three quarters of incidents. Failure to follow safe systems where they did exist only accounted for 24% of accidents.
Most happened when unloading or loading and the commonest were falls from trailers. However fork lifts also featured. Almost half of the fork lift incidents involved people climbing on the forks to access higher levels.
Usdaw has done a summary of the main findings. Click here to read it.
The report has been issued as part of the current HSE campaign on falls from vehicles. If you have not already done so, you can visit the HSE webpages for the campaign here and sign up for email alerts.
Contact Details
Health and Safety section
Ph: 0161 249 2441
Fax: 0161 249 2475
Email: healthandsafety@usdaw.org.uk
 Printer Friendly Page  Email to a Friend
|
