Eight people have died in construction-related accidents in 2015 thus far, according to the city’s Buildings Department, as many as in all of 2014; the year before, three died. Not since 2008, during the height of the last building boom, has the number of construction accidents been so high, when a rash of episodes, including two falling cranes, claimed 19 lives, according to an article in The New York Times.
The number of accidents has also been on the rise, with 231 in 2014, up 24 percent from the year before. (Accident figures for 2015 were unavailable.) Most in the industry agree that there is a simple equation at work: The more construction, the more danger, reported The Times.