Stumbled on a stat that 70% of crane accidents happen during setup not the actual lift

Found that in a 2023 OSHA report while looking up rigging rules after a near miss with a leveling jack last Tuesday, anyone else double check their outrigger pads after reading something like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

chen.jenny27d ago

oh man that stat is wild honestly. i have been way more paranoid about setup stuff since my buddy had a scissor lift tilt on some soft ground last year. he was just getting it ready and the outrigger sank right through a patch of gravel that looked fine from the surface. now i literally walk the whole area around where im setting up and kick at the ground everywhere i plan to put pads. safety briefings always focus on the actual lift like thats when bodies drop but setup is where everything goes wrong before you even get off the ground. that 70% number makes me want to triple check every single pad before i even think about extending anything.

sethtorres19d ago

Whoa, hold on there! If 70% of accidents happen during setup, that just means the real lift is the safest part of the whole job, so why are we sweating the easy stuff? I've seen guys spend twenty minutes obsessing over a pad placement while the actual load is swinging ten feet from a power line, and that seems backwards to me. Maybe those stats just count minor stuff like a bent pin or a slipped leveling jack way more than the big failures, so the real danger is still in the air, not on the ground.