“You wear seat belts because if the forklift falls over, you don’t want to try to escape,” he said. While about 75 percent of individuals killed with forklifts are pedestrians, the other 25 percent are forklift drivers – many of whom die because they’re not wearing seat belts and they try to bail out when there’s a tip-over, he said. Samento said seat belts are critical for forklift drivers, even though the vehicles rarely travel very fast. There are about 850,000 forklifts in the U.S., and 11 percent of them will be involved in some type of accident each year. every three to four days, with somewhere between 80 to 100 deaths per year. According to OSHA, there is a forklift-related fatality in the U.S. “That really hammers home the human cost of accidents.”Ī big part of Samento’s presentation focused on forklifts, which are among the biggest workplace hazards. “I’ve been called in on 43 workplace fatalities,” he said. (He warned attendees at the start about the nature of the images, and during the presentation, he warned them again before showing slides or clips that might be upsetting.)

He brought his gripping presentation, which uses graphic photos and videos of deaths and injuries, to the recent Aluminum Extruders Council (AEC) Management Conference in Washington, D.C. The trauma affected him so much that he became a safety educator, and he’s developed a hard-hitting course that shows, in occasionally gruesome detail, what workplace injuries and deaths really look like. Years ago, he said he watched a friend die in an on-the-job accident. Safety expert Tony Samento gave a hard-hitting presentation at the recent Aluminum Extruders Council Management Conference in Washington, D.C.

Graphic workplace accidents