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Getting Serious About Fall Prevention. Hurt, Crosbie and May are Lexington's Personal Injury Attorneys

Lexington Personal Injury | Kentucky Motor Vehicle Attorney |

Slip and Fall Accidents The most frequent type of accident that occurs at construction sites are falls. Research from leading professionals and government agencies indicate that fall accidents in the construction industry are further the leading cause of many serious injuries and fatalities.

Many parties have sought means to prevent falls, including the Kentucky Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, the construction industry, and various academic researchers. Some measures do not work as well as others. For example, since the 1996 OSHA revised regulations for fall prevention, neither the quantity nor pattern of falls on construction sites has changed significantly.

Incredibly, the proportion of accidents that are caused by falls has actually increased. Part of this explanation may be because of the explosive growth of the construction industry between 2002-2006. The strong economic growth has resulted in the hiring of many workers, a large proportion of whom may be inadequately trained. While it is not absolutely clear whether the incident rate of fall injuries would have been reduced had there been a clear focus on fall prevention in recent years, it is seems logical that this would have occurred.

For the construction industry, it is evident that many fall hazards go unnoticed or that efforts to prevent falls are not effectively implemented. Fall hazards on sites should be detected through rigorous inspections of construction sites and eliminated through effective preventive approaches. Operations particularly susceptible to falls include roofing, erecting structural steel and exterior carpentry. Falls are often associated with workers on roofs, scaffolds, ladders, and on floors with openings. Of particular emphasis, occupations such as construction laborers, roofers, carpenters, and structural metal workers should be specifically addressed through fall prevention efforts.

Providing fall preventive equipment to workers, including full-body harnesses, along with the proper training, should reduce the number of falls. The lack of safety training is often the root cause for many falls. According to the analysis, misjudgment of workers may account for about one third of the construction worker falls. Fall prevention training can be effective in addressing numerous causes of accidents. Traditional safety training, restricted to the verbal and manual descriptions of the OSHA regulations, may not be sufficient to enable the workers to detect and eliminate all fall hazards. Innovative training approaches should be explored

Hurt, Crosbie & May serves clients in Kentucky, including the following areas:
Cities: Lexington, Nicholasville, Georgetown, Richmond, Winchester, Louisville, Frankfort, Lawrenceburg, Cynthiana, Mt. Sterling, Versailles, Paris, Stanton, Harrodsburg, Clay City, Wilmore, Berea.

Counties: Fayette, Jessamine, Scott, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Woodford, Shelby, Anderson, Clark, Mercer, Powell, Garrard, Bourbon, Montgomery, Spencer, Estill.
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