Most Common Construction Site Accidents
- June 10, 2020
There are plenty of good reasons to choose a career in construction.
The work offers excellent job security, compensation and benefits while at the same time providing the opportunity to do a solid day’s work that ends with providing something tangible and needed. Unfortunately, with all of these positives, there are also downsides, and the most notable of these is the risk of being injured in a construction site accident. Though there are myriad ways and variations on how a person can get hurt on a construction site, there are four categories of accidents that are experienced most frequently. Those four types of incidents are:
- Falls– People who work on construction sites are vulnerable to toppling off of elevated areas, off of unstable and improperly positioned ladders, and falling into unprotected holes. They can trip and fall over debris and building materials, and in some cases, these accidents can be deadly. Depending upon how a person falls, the impact or the material that they fall upon can cause severe physical trauma.
- Being struck by an object – There are objects of all sizes, shapes, and purposes found on construction sites, and being struck by them can lead to a wide range of injuries. Something as small as a screwdriver, hammer or even a lunchbox can cause serious harm when dropped from on high. At the other range of the spectrum construction site workers can be struck by vehicles or heavy equipment such as cranes or trucks. The risk of objects being inadvertently propelled towards people by heavy equipment, of walls collapsing or of objects being dropped from scaffolding are all too common and are the exact reason why construction site workers wear hardhats and eye protection.
- Electrocutions – Construction sites require electrical power, and this means that construction site workers frequently come into close proximity with live power lines. These can cause explosion and electrocution that lead to electrical burns and deaths.
- Getting caught in or in-between – These types of accidents are generally caused by human error, and they are blamed for about ten percent of all construction site accidents and injuries. Workers can lose limbs, fingers or their lives when they get caught in equipment that is operating, while others end up trapped between solid objects like walls and moving objects like forklifts.
These four types of accidents represent almost two-thirds of all accidents leading to fatalities in the country and represent approximately 600 deaths per year.
Contact our team if you or a loved one have been the victim of a construction site injury.