Safety, technology and the human factor

Around the world, despite the increased emphasis on workplace safety, the number of serious accidents involving forklifts remains high. According to the United States’ National Safety Council, in 2021 forklift accidents caused 70 work-related deaths across the country.

“The main forklift safety issues faced by materials handling operations include ensuring the correct training and certification of forklift operators, improving visibility from the forklift operator’s seat, the overloading of forklifts and the damage caused by neglected maintenance and inspection,” says Sander Loosveld, chief strategy officer and executive vice president EMEA at GemOne.

As long-term observers of the sector would note, this list of concerns has not changed much over time. As ever, forklift safety is about effective training, visibility (for operators and pedestrians) and ensuring that operators (and other staff) follow correct operational procedures.

What has changed are the tools available to turn around the above safety statistics. For this reason, ELOKON senior vice president of sales Mark Stanton sees cause for optimism.

“The future of forklift safety is very bright indeed. There is enormous investment being made in technologies such as Lidar, radar, artificial intelligence (AI) cameras, ultra-wide band networks/sensors, and so on,” he says.

Citing AI as an example, Stanton says that while many of these technologies are already being deployed, they are essentially still in their infancy. In coming years, as these technologies develop further, they will become even more effective and, as a result, workplace safety is set to improve.

With this in mind, here is a selection of some of the latest forklift safety products and their respective suppliers.