New York construction workers like you have a rough job. You face many risks on a daily basis. For example, did you know that construction workers are at nearly double the risk for a fall injury?
What is it that makes fall injuries so common? Is there anything you can do to reduce your risk of suffering an injury?
Statistics of construction zone falls
The National Safety Council (NSC) keeps track of matters related to workplace fall incidents. For example, in 2016 the NSC recorded 48,060 total fall injury incidents. Of those, 24,700 happened to people in the construction industry, while 384 of the reported 697 deaths were also in construction.
What is it about construction that puts you at such high risk? Some of the most common factors include:
- The use of outdated or broken equipment
- A failure on the part of management to keep up with safety training
- Insufficient construction site maintenance
- Refusal to comply with safety standards
- Workers rushing through work without following safety protocol
Work on construction sites is also often done at significant heights, so a single mishap resulting in a fall could have catastrophic consequences.
Where do these risks come from?
Many of these issues stem from negligence on the part of management. People want you to do the work and do it fast. They may encourage you cut corners to get it done. But that is a recipe for falls and serious injuries.
In other cases, a parent company may want to cut expenses. But they do so in dangerous ways, like cutting back on safety education or keeping old equipment. Again, this leads to an increased risk of falls. If negligence on the part of your employer or another party on a construction site causes serious injury, you may be owed significant compensation for your medical expenses, lost income and other costs resulting from your injury. For more on that, please see our construction accident overview.
