Did YOU Cause the Last Injury Because YOU Followed the Regulatory Standards? Are You Sure?
Forklift Trainers with any experience soon discover that so-called "trained" or "certified" operators can be the ones who get seriously injured! If YOU are the most recent Trainer of the operator causing the injury, it is human nature for you to have armed yourself with the protective psychological mechanisms to ensure yourself and others that YOU are not blamed because YOU fulfilled YOUR role. It was certainly some one else's fault. [To BE Completed]
"Just because my organization is in compliance with government powered industrial truck (forklift) rules, does NOT mean we will prevent the next forklift-related serious injury."
Are you surprised? I hope not. But, if you are surprised, you have the power to disabuse yourself of the OSHA compliance effectiveness notion. Just ask and answer this question:
"Immediately BEFORE our last serious forklift-related injury, was my organization in compliance with ALL related OSHA rules?"
No matter what the answer, if you act on it in earnest, you can protect yourself from the effects of the next forklift-related serious injury. In other words, in the vast majority of organizations with serious injuries, the FACT that you are in compliance with OSHA, is NOT mutually exclusive of the FACT that you had that serious injury! At some point, even if you are in compliance, the fact of it becomes irrelevant. Sadly, it doesn't bring the back the dead, and it doesn't undue the pain felt by the injured, their loved ones, coworkers, and managers.
This does NOT mean that there are evil people with nefarious intentions influencing the state of industrial safety! It does mean that the fact of continuing forklift-related serious injuries is only going to be resolved in your company if you have the will, intention, and focus to do so.
Is it your will to comply with OSHA? Is it your intention to develop operators who drive safely AND with adequate speed? It's a good place to start. It's in the right questions, smarty! What are YOUR answers? What will you do next?
Best wishes, Gotta go,
Joe