According to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), most forklift accident fatalities and injuries can be attributed to lack of safe operating procedures, lack of safety rule enforcement and insufficient or inadequate training. Many employees are injured when lift trucks are inadvertently driven off loading docks, lifts fall between docks and an unsecured trailer or when they are struck by a forklift.

Construction accidents, especially falls or being struck by falling objects, can result in traumatic brain injuries. These are catastrophic injuries, which means that they will affect the victim for the rest of his or her life.

Brain injuries can affect the way a person thinks, feels and acts. The most common symptoms of a traumatic brain injury include severe headaches, confusion, loss of consciousness, spinal fluid leaking out of nose or ears and dilated pupils. If you are experiencing any of these symptoms immediately or shortly after a construction accident, you should seek medical attention as soon as possible.

Here are the most common requirements to prevent fall injuries and fatalities at Arizona construction sites:

• Where protection is required, employers must select fall protection systems such as guardrails, appropriate for given situations.


• Always use proper construction and installation of safety systems.


• Make sure employees are supervised properly.


• Use safe work procedures.


• Train workers in proper, selection, use and maintenance of fall protection systems.

Immediate investigation and preservation of evidence is also a critical part of proving a personal injury case involving construction accidents. Investigation in a construction accident usually involves careful examination of the scene soon after the incident. If there is a delay in this crucial part of an investigation, important evidence such as hazardous materials or defective machinery may get lost. An experienced Arizona construction accident lawyer can send a letter to your employer requesting that all evidence be preserved so it can be independently examined and documented. Prompt investigation and interviewing of witnesses who saw the accident is also critical to an injury case or claim.

This can be very overwhelming to the worker who is injured through no fault of their own. Thus, many injured workers and their families try to find the best construction accident personal injury lawyer in Arizona that they can find. However, they will not find a “top ten accident lawyer” list anywhere, in all likelihood. Instead, unfortunately, workers are left to fend for themselves.

When falling objects lead to serious injury or fatalities at a construction site, there may be a right to make claims above and beyond the workers’ compensation system.

However, there is a general prohibition against bringing a claim against ones own employer. This is known as the “exclusive remedy” provided by workers’ compensation, whereby an injured worker can make a workers’ compensation claim but cannot file a lawsuit against a fellow co worker or the construction company for which the injured worker was employed.

Most construction workers in Arizona know that they have a right to make a workers’ compensation claim. However, many do not realize that in many cases where there have been injuries due to scaffolding issues in the State of Arizona, they may also have the right – in addition to their workers’ compensation claim – to make claims for personal injury in addition to those comp claims that can be very beneficial to them or to their loved ones.

Many people expect that OSHA and the Arizona enforcement arm of OSHA will do an investigation. Also, people have come to expect that the injured worker or the surviving family members of the injured worker will be able to make a workers’ compensation claim.

What many people do not recognize is that in addition to the benefits available under workers’ comp, there may also be rights available under the personal injury system in Arizona. These rights do not take away from, but actually add to, those rights available when a comp claim is made.

Often, the advice that is given to construction workers is: Wear your hard hats and protective gear. However, when a heavy object weighing thousands of pounds strikes a construction worker, even hard hats or other gear cannot fully protect them. A construction site worker recently died after a metal beam weighing about 1,500 pounds fell on him. The 40-year-old worker was trying to attach a safety cable to the beam when it fell. The fatal construction accident apparently occurred in an outdoor area where several beams were being erected. Officials with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration are investigating the incident.

According to the Center for Injury Sciences in Alabama, electrocution is the fifth leading cause of occupational injury deaths in the United States. It is particularly a danger faced by those who work near electrical lines such as electricians, utility workers and those employed in the construction and manufacturing industries. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) reported that among 224 fatal electrocution incidents that were evaluated over a 12-year period dating back to 1994, workers did not follow proper safety procedures. In some cases, proper protective equipment was not worn. In some other cases, workers or supervisors were not provided with proper safety training. In a majority of the incidents, there was a failure to comply with OSHA and other federal safety regulations.

A recent news article reported an incident where a worker fell 12 feet at a construction site. The incident happened when the man stepped backward and fell on to an unfinished basement floor. The construction worker sustained head and internal injuries and was transported to a local hospital.

Cave-ins are a deadly trenching hazard. There are also other dangers that lurk in trenches including asphyxiation due to lack of oxygen in a confined space, inhalation of toxic fumes, drowning, electrocution and explosions. In fact, the fatality rate for excavation work is 112 percent higher than the rate for general construction. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires that workers in trenches and excavations be protected and that safety and health programs address the variety of dangers they face on the job. Trench collapses may be caused by lack of protective systems, unsafe access or exits, and failure to properly inspect the trench.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has fined a construction company about $55,000 for allowing a worker into a trench that was at risk of caving in, according to a recent news report. A federal inspector apparently found a construction worker in the 6-foot trench that had no safeguards in place to prevent a trench collapse. The trench had no ladder to facilitate an escape for the worker. Also, an excavator at the edge of the trench had caused soil and other debris to fall into the trench, OSHA officials said. The excavator operator was not wearing a high-visibility vest and the injury-and-illness log at the construction site was incomplete, which are also violations of federal standards.

According to the OSHA's web site, falls are the leading cause of death in the construction industry. An average of 362 fatal falls occurred each year from 1995 to 1999, a trend which is on the rise. In fact, falls from a higher elevation account for one-third of all construction accident deaths. It is extremely important that employers in the construction industry adopt safety and health programs to protect workers from falls on the job. Falls commonly occur at Arizona construction accident sites as a result of scaffold collapses, slip and falls, or structures being improperly secured or shored up.

A recent news report describes an incident where a construction worker fell 25 feet from a ladder into a concrete vault that was being built on site. The construction worker was apparently conscious when crews arrived, but he was in a lot of pain from enduring serious injuries. No one saw the man fall off the ladder. The worker was said to have been lying there for about five minutes before he was found by his co-workers. He was transported to an area hospital for treatment of serious personal injuries.