Stumbled on a stat about crane accidents that blew my mind

I was reading through some OSHA reports last night and found out that between 2011 and 2021, there were over 300 crane-related fatalities in the US alone, mostly from rigging failures. That surprised me because I always thought it was tipping over that got most people. Has anyone else dug into these numbers and found a different trend?

2 comments

2 Comments

alice99122d ago

Whoa, that's a really interesting stat but I gotta push back a little! I actually think the tipping over thing gets way more attention because it looks more dramatic on video, but the numbers might be skewed by how they classify rigging failures versus other causes. It feels like the real story here is that overall crane deaths are pretty low compared to other construction stuff, like falls from height or being hit by objects, which kill way more people every year but nobody talks about. Also, a lot of those rigging failures probably come from old, worn out gear that companies should have replaced, but they keep using it because cranes are expensive and downtime is a bigger deal to them than safety. So maybe the bigger issue isn't the type of accident but the fact that some companies just don't inspect their equipment often enough, which would make any category look worse than it should be.

angelab6222d ago

Hang on, 300 deaths in 10 years across the whole country? That's roughly 30 a year. More people probably choke on steak in that time. And the part about rigging failures being the main culprit just sounds like a paperwork shuffle to me. OSHA loves to lump anything with a wire rope or a shackle into "rigging failure" even if it was really operator error or a tired old crane that shouldn't have been running. Makes me wonder if they're just trying to make a specific type of accident look like a bigger problem so they can justify more regulations and fines.