This shouldn’t be surprising news. When you’re talking about an area full of sudden drops, heavy machinery, and sharp objects, injuries are bound to happen. After all, construction workers wear hard hats for a reason.
But just because some accidents in construction can be expected doesn’t mean that nothing can be done to prevent them – or that those who suffer injuries in these types of accidents should just sit idly by. For matters to improve, people have to take action.
Unfortunately, that still means that hundreds of people die every year from construction accidents, and in 2012 the number of deaths actually rose by 5 percent over 2011 to 775 deaths. These numbers are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which releases occupational fatality numbers every year.
Obviously, it’s never good when the number of people dying from year to year increases, but the bad news doesn’t stop there for construction. The industry is responsible for almost 30 percent of all workplace deaths, and data from Labor Force Survey indicates that workers in the construction industry are guilty of widespread underreporting when it comes to accidents that aren’t serious or life-threatening.
How bad is this underreporting? There are about 6.7 million people working in the construction industry. The given statistics say that 880 injuries occur for every 100,000 workers. That would mean just under 60,000 people are injured in construction every year. However, the LFS believes that the numbers are closer to 1,427 for every 100,000 workers, which would put the real number of injuries at more than 95,000 every year.
Why is this happening? Sometimes people believe that they will lose their jobs if they report an accident because they will be blamed for something going wrong. There is also the sense in many situations that the victim needs to take responsibility for what happened to them. Sure, they’re the one with the broken leg, but it’s their fault for slipping and falling in a dangerous area.
Thoughts like these aren’t helpful, though. You aren’t a Florida personal injury lawyer, and you likely don’t know what you should legally be held liable for. If you or a loved one is hurt in a construction site accident, you can’t afford to simply ignore it – you owe it to yourself and everyone else you work with who is at risk of having the same thing happen to take action and make sure that the problem is taken care of.
At the very least you should get workers’ compensation, but often that won’t make up for everything that you’re losing. If you believe that you were hurt due to the negligence or recklessness of another, the best thing that you can do for yourself and to protect future workers is to speak with a Florida attorney who has experience dealing with construction lawsuits.
Only someone who has been there and done this before can look at your specific incident and let you know whether or not you have a viable case based on the evidence available. Maybe your employers were in violation of OSHA standards. Maybe someone was acting irresponsibly on the job and caused your accident – sometimes this can be attributed to employer negligence, too. Whatever the situation, you deserve to know what your options are by setting up a free consultation with The Injury Law Firm of South Florida. In addition to free consultations, we work on a contingency basis, meaning you pay nothing until we recover damages.