Injuries at work can happen anywhere. Maybe you slip down a flight of stairs on your way to the office or trip over a cord on your way to the bathroom; life is full of accidents. Fortunately, for most workers, workplace injuries are not that serious. Unfortunately, this is not true for construction workers. According to the U.S. Department of Labor in a recent year, over 800 construction workers died on the job. It further estimates that four out of every 100-construction workers are injured in some way every year.
Statistics mean very little unless they identify useful trends that people, and specifically construction workers, can attack to reduce the danger. According to that same report, one-half of those deaths were caused by electrocution, falling objects, being crushed or falling off of high areas.
The report seems to emphasize that whenever you are in a dangerous area, using heavy equipment or handling a live-wire, you should be extra careful. Most construction workers are probably aware of the heightened dangers in these activities. What may be useful from this report isn't that dangerous jobs result in more deaths, but instead that taking safety for granted can result in deaths that should have been prevented. Accidents don't usually happen when you are careful; they happen when you or a co-worker take the situation for granted. This report should serve as a wake-up call to always be vigilant when you are on the job. If not for your safety, then for the safety of your fellow construction workers.
If you were injured on the job at a construction site, then you may need to file for workers' compensation until you can recover and go back to work. You may want to speak to an attorney to assist you through this process. The workers' compensation system was conceived as a way to eliminate uncertainty for workers and employers, however, this does not always translate into real-life application.
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