Top 4 Construction Accident Statistics

Similar to every other operating environment, those in the construction business may experience work accidents from time to time. If the employee's injury could be directly attributed to the mistakes of their employer, these mishaps can result in successful construction injury claims.

While making work accident claims can help a lot of these injured on building sites, it's much better if workers and workers are made well aware of the risks, and the correct procedures are set into place to avoid construction injuries from happening in the first place. This would cause a decrease in construction injuries and fewer construction injury claims being made.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) provides statistics associated with building incidents - here are four intriguing construction injury numbers for those who want to find out more about the potential dangers of working on a construction website.

1. Construction accidents possess the most fatal accidents

Together with 29.4 percent of all fatal accidents in 2008/9 attributable to the construction industry, construction accidents lead to the most deadly injuries of all the most important industry groups. With 53 deadly construction injuries in 2008/9, this was, nevertheless, a 26 percent decrease on the previous year's figure.

2. Major construction incidents are diminishing

Since 1999/2000 there's been an overall decrease in the amount of reported major injuries occurring in the construction market. In fact, the general speed for 2008/9 is 36 percent on that for 1999/2000. Despite this decrease, there are still more significant accidents reported among those working on construction sites than you will find in any other principal business group. There was also a steady reduction in over-3-day construction injuries during this time, totaling a 43 percent reduction since 1999/2000.

3. The most common construction accidents involve managing and slips and trips

Construction accidents most commonly involve managing (29 percent of accidents) and slips and trips (22 percent). These are also the most frequent types of injuries reported across all the main businesses. But, construction differed from different industries in the general quantity of injuries caused by falling from a height. This accounts for 17 percent of building accidents compared to just 8 percent in general. Moving or falling objects were more of a cause of injuries in construction, with 16 percent compared to an overall 11 percent. Contact with moving machinery, power and collapses/overturns all had a greater occurrence in construction than in other sectors.

4. Less serious construction injuries are under-reported

A greater proportion of reported construction accidents are serious in contrast to people in other industries. But, Labour Force Survey (LFS) data indicates that this is because less serious construction injuries are under-reported. The LFS estimated rate of non lethal injuries for 2007/8 has been 1427 per 100,000 compared to the actual rate reported of 880 per 100,000. This indicates some work injury victims may be passing up the compensation they deserve by failing to create legitimate construction injury claims for less severe injuries.