Introduction

There are a number of different risks faced by people that work, and in general safety awareness is perhaps lower than it should be. In spite of huge sums of money invested by companies into training their employees and teaching them all about safety, there are still a number of accidents that happen each year. It is rather unfortunate that most accidents are either caused by a person’s carelessness or by the carelessness of their employer.

In any case, one of the better methods of preventing accidents from happening is to understand how they could potentially happen, and how they might end up happening to you if you are not careful. Understanding these two things will allow you to alter your plan of attack to compensate for them and in the end this could be the difference between you being hurt during the day or getting through it accident free. The rest of this article will discuss a very specific group of accidents, scaffolding accidents.

What are scaffolding accidents?

A scaffold is a device used in a number of different professions, but in most cases you will either see window cleaners or painters using it on a regular basis. This is not to say that it is not useful for other professions but because of the nature of those two types of work it is more likely for those two professions to use a scaffold. It is a platform that is suspended downwards from the roof of a building with strong wires and the worker stands on the platform in order to work on places high up on buildings that they otherwise would not be able to reach.

There is really only one type of scaffolding accident and it is the accident that occurs either when the wires are not set properly or alternatively when they are not made of particularly strong material. Under both of these cases, it is perfectly possible for the wires to break and the scaffold to fall all the way down to the ground.

There are a number of different injuries that might result from this, and the injury that occurs is going to be a function of how high in the air the scaffold was at the time the wires broke. The higher in the air it was, the longer the fall, which means a more serious injury. People have died in scaffolding accidents before when the scaffolds were close to the top of skyscrapers and broke.

What can I do to prevent scaffolding accidents?

There are a number of different things that you can do in order to prevent scaffolding accidents from affecting you and the vast majority of these things are related to checking the equipment itself. If you are on a scaffold and it breaks aside from quick thinking to jump and grab onto one of the wires (assuming they are even strong enough to support your weight after the break) there is not much else you can do when the accident has already occurred. Therefore, your goal should be to do everything that you can in order to prevent the accident from happening in the first place.

Make sure that you check the equipment before you start your work. Look for any weaknesses or breaks and make sure that the overall structure of the scaffold is strong and secure. Then and only then should you venture out onto it and start your work.

What should I do if I am involve in a scaffolding accident?

Once you have recovered medically from the accident, it is time to evaluate just how the accident took place. Was it your fault or was it the fault of your employer? If you believe the latter to be true then the best thing you can do is to contact a lawyer.

A lawyer will be able to help you through this difficult situation, and most lawyers have a lot of experience handling situations just like this one. Discuss the situation with them in more detail and then take the advice they give you seriously. Consider each one carefully before coming to a decision about what you want to do.