Forklift operator killed when driver pulls away from dock

Actually they give you a safety card that expires one year later usually. Two if you're lucky or you can change the date without it being too obvious. No idea what places you're going that require you to view the same video every time. Hundreds of plants in my career never once had to do that and I haul chemical tanker.

Secondly, of all those pictures they showed you. Your safety training wouldn't have prevented a single one. Why? Because you are a driver and are not going to working on the actual plant. You will go in, park where they tell you, hook up where they say and unload. Very rare to even be inside an actual production area.

Third, if that stuff is really that bad those long sleeve cotton shirts and denim jeans won't help you one bit. Why put on rubber boots for the vicious chemicals but leave the rest of your body unprotected? I guarantee leather boots are better protection than denim.

Lastly, if a plant blows up and you are in the blast area no safety training on earth is going to help you. It's 99.9% sure you didn't cause it, couldn't have prevented it and that video did nothing to prepare yourself for it. I remember one safety guy telling me that the guys who died in the Texas City explosion could have lived if they had only been wearing Nomex. Nomex, which doesn't protect your head, hands or feet. I asked him if it ever occurred to him that I would rather be dead that live with no face, hands or feet.

 

I will also add this. If a plant has really bad stuff in there and they claim to care so much about safety, so much so that they actually made a video about it. Then why are drivers allowed in at all? Seems like they don't really care about safety which is fine just be honest about it and quit wasting my time making me watch a safety video on a VHS tape that is so old it's nothing but static and calling that safety.

 

MSHA requires site-specific training at every mine and quarry you visit. Some (where you really aren't going anywhere "dangerous" or working near their production employees) just hand you a slip of paper with the required information, while others (perhaps you travel a little further into the plant or will be working in the vicinity of their employees) show a video. OSHA or some other governmental oversight agengy may require the same of chemical plants and other hazardous areas. Point being, it may not be up to the company whether or not to "inconvenience" you, the driver, on your way into their plant with the safety training. In my experience, the policies these places have regarding drivers and others in the plant are a direct result of boneheaded things drivers and others have done which have led to injuries or "near miss" (a term which never made much sense to me, as if you "nearly missed" something, you hit it...) incidents where the boneheads involved simply got lucky. In other words, somebody did something stupid, and now everybody has to take measures to make it less likely that somebody else will do the same stupid thing in the future.

Look around the truck stop. There are a LOT of stupid people driving trucks. Hell, look around ANYWHERE and you'll see an abundance of stupid people. They are the reason you have to sit through those videos. If you've been around long enough, you've probably had your own moments of head-up-the-rear-itis...and you're either smart enough to realize that so you don't make the same mistake again, or you're one of the stupid people oblivious to their own ignorance and will continue on until your actions injure/kill yourself or others.

The videos seem stupid, but they serve a purpose. Usually that purpose is compliance, just like a single truck O/O running his own numbers is required to keep a driver file on himself, complete with a job application, annual DMV checks, etc. It may seem like nonsense, but there is a reason you are forced to watch them.

 

Uh, okay. Thought that was pretty well established already.

 

I never had any inclination to drive away from the dock when I shouldn't. I really don't understand how a driver can pull out, trusting those red/green dock lights. I always go inside and check to make sure I am safe to pull away.

 

I have yet to see a forklift driver wear a seat belt

 

The principle is that the seatbelt keeps you within the safetycage.

 

Absolutely. I did masonry for 20 years and finally started wearing the seat belt in the Bobcat loader. Got tired of being a bludgeon against the lap bar.

 

Some of the newer lifts you need to wear the seatbelt just to get them to start

 

In Danmark that has been the "norm" for 30y.