FACTS
- Pinch-Point Contact: Hands, fingers, or clothing can get trapped between moving parts, rollers, or gears when guards are missing or bypassed.
- Crushing Force: Heavy equipment, attachments, and loads can trap or crush workers when machinery shifts, drops, or tips unexpectedly.
- Struck-By Motion: Buckets, blades, arms, or tool heads can swing, lift, or extend without warning, striking anyone inside the equipment’s path.
- Roll-Over Hazard: Machinery used on uneven, unstable, or sloped ground can roll, trapping the operator or nearby workers underneath.
- Unexpected Start-Up: Machines that power on during maintenance, cleaning, or adjustments can pull in clothing or body parts before workers can react.
- Blind Spot Danger: Operators cannot always see workers standing near loaders, trucks, or tractors, increasing the chance of being struck or pinned.
STATS
- In the US, struck-by incidents caused 150 fatalities and 14,000 nonfatal injuries in the construction sector in 2020, with heavy equipment involved in approximately 75% of cases.
- Caught-in/between hazards accounted for 5.4% of US construction fatalities from 2020-2024, primarily from workers being crushed or pinned by equipment or collapsing materials.
- From 2021-2022, overexertion and bodily reaction events, including crush injuries from equipment, led to 976,090 days-away cases in the US private sector, with machinery entanglement a key factor.
- Annually, US workers suffer about 125,000 caught or crushed-by injuries from body parts entangled in machinery or caught between objects, costing over $1.4 billion in compensation for nonfatal claims.
- In Canada, struck-by and caught-in incidents from vehicles or equipment caused 13% of workplace fatalities in Ontario from 2020-2024, with construction sites seeing disproportionate impacts.
- In 2022, Canada reported 348,747 accepted lost-time injury claims, with caught-in/between events in equipment-heavy sectors like manufacturing and warehousing contributing to 10-15% of cases.