It’s hard to fathom that in this day and age of real-time data, education and technology, worker fatalities in the U.S. have actually increased (up 7 percent in 2016 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Clearly, when it comes to jobsite safety, there’s still work to do. Take the hazard of dropped objects. It’s an often forgotten about aspect of at-heights safety, but the numbers prove they shouldn’t be. While awareness has grown over the last handful of years, the risk only really truly appears to move from the periphery when a tragic story — like the 58-year-old man from New Jersey who died after being struck with a tape measure in 2014 — goes viral. Yet each year, drops kill hundreds and injure tens of thousands more, not to mention the close calls that don’t get reported. Think about those undiagnosed concussions from something hitting a worker in the hard hat. Or all the near misses that could have been tragic with one step forward or back.