105,313Records 71,083Employers 85,290Hospitalizations 27,770Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-10-31
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14254478

CHEST,IND TRK OPERATOR,WORK RULES,CRUSHED,INDUSTRIAL TRUCK,SEAT BELT,SHARP TURN,UNTRAINED,OVERTURN

Event
CHEST,IND TRK OPERATOR,WORK RULES,CRUSHED,INDUSTRIAL TRUCK,SEAT BELT,SHARP TURN,UNTRAINED,OVERTURN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14254478
Report ID
453710

Event description

Employee killed when forklift overturns on him

Investigation abstract

Employee #1, who was operating an electric industrial forklift truck, was return ing from an assigned task at an outside paved driveway. He was turning the truck sharply to the left when it overturned on top of him, killing him. The cause of death was listed as blunt trauma to the chest due to compression by a lift truc k, resulting in hemothorax. At the time of the accident, the driveway was dry an d in good repair. The forklift had no adverse load attached; it was rated at 7.2 mph and was probably turned at close to this speed. The 18-year-old employee, w ho was not trained in the use of forklifts, was holding a keychain in his hand d uring the maneuver. He was not wearing the provided seat belt.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 18 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    5
    Event type
    2
    Source
    27
    Occupation code
    877
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    8
    Hazardous substance
    8880
    Task assigned
    2

Codes shown verbatim from OSHA's accident-investigation database. A human-readable decoder is coming in a future release once the accident_lookup2 dictionary is loaded.