The Most Common Types of Heavy Equipment Injuries in the Workplace

The 5 most common types of injuries that are associated with heavy equipment include:

• Vehicle accidents – drivers are at high risk of auto accidents which can be severe and even fatal
• Repetitive motion complications – these are certainly less severe than heavy machinery freak accidents. However, repetitive motion complications can be just as costly as the victim requires pain management, therapies, treatment, and suffers a loss of income. Regularly lifting heavy equipment can put serious strain on tendons and muscle which, in turn, leads to spinal injuries and back pain
• Falling objects – falling objects can result in serious head injuries and are common in the workplace
• Collisions with equipment – when a worker accidentally collides with moving machinery or hard objects on a construction site or on the factory floor, life-threatening injuries can occur.
• Machine entanglement – when fingers, hands, hair, clothes, and shoes get caught in a piece of machinery, or a worker is pinned down by a forklift, serious injuries, and in some cases, death can occur

Machinery that is poorly maintained or improperly operated can cause serious injury or death when an accident happens. Such heavy equipment includes:

• Forklifts
• Cranes
• Bulldozers
• Backhoes
• Trucks

According to New York laws, workplaces should always be operated in a safe manner. In fact, the New York State Industrial Code mandates certain rules that govern the way construction work and sites should be conducted.

Sometimes, the injury is the result of the careless operation of equipment. In other cases, the damage is the product of a defect in the equipment. Our heavy equipment accident lawyers will carefully investigate your case and hold all responsible parties accountable.

Who Is Liable for Defective Equipment?

Sometimes, the injuries a worker incurs has nothing to do with an employer’s negligence. In certain heavy equipment accidents, a worker can be hurt due to a defective product. A piece of heavy equipment has malfunctioned due to faulty design or missing parts which result in an injury.

In such instances, our team will help you build a liability case that renders the designer of the machinery, or the supplier of the parts, as the responsible party.

Along with you, we will work to prove:

• That the equipment that caused the injury was already unreasonably dangerous when it left the manufacturer or supplier
• That you were using the equipment the way it was supposed to be used
• That the equipment had a defect that caused the injury