CONSTRUCTION ACCIDENTS INVOLVING CRANES. With construction accidents involving various types of cranes becoming more of a serious matter, the number of accidents is becoming astounding as the number is on the rise. During a three year period, over 158 accidents were reported involving cranes with at least one accident occurring each month of that time period. Of these accidents many of the injuries were very serious and some even ended in fatalities.
The accidents that were the result of cranes used at construction sites varied in number depending on whether the accident was to the actual crane operator or to a non-crane operator. Crane operator accidents resulted in serious injury happened more on bridge cranes, there have been fatalities reported on mobile cranes as well. Non-crane operator accidents actually resulted in higher numbers of serious accidents, and also had a higher amount of fatalities than the accidents that were crane operator related. Of these accidents, the majority of crane accidents involved workers in the vicinity of mobile cranes.
Many of these accidents involved the loads with the cranes, and again, the major revolved around mobile cranes.
Among cranes that were privately owned, 90 percent of the accidents were accidents that happened when using the private sector entities. The other 10 percent of accidents involved public sector cases. All the public sector cases resulted in serious injuries and all of the cranes involved were mobile cranes.
There are numerous reasons for crane accidents to happen. A few of the causes may involve instability, lack of communication, and lack of training. Instability accidents that involved mobile cranes were the result of the crane tipping over or the load falling off the hook or slings. Lack of communication seemed to be another major cause because of the way the crane's operator station is situated. Sometimes the distance between the point of operation causes the problem, while other times there is a situation where the view is partially obstructed, especially with mobile cranes. With the causes of crane accidents being rounded out with lack of training, it would seem this could be the most easily avoidable cause of all.
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