We reviewed all the OSHA accident reports for tower crane accidents dating all the way back to 1984. What we learned from this review is that tower crane accidents are rare and that anything can go wrong when a tower crane is on a job site.

Given the height that is involved and the momentum when something falls from the crane, tower crane accidents have a high likelihood of being fatal.

It is hard to miss a tower crane on a jobsite. There are the massive cranes that are hundreds of feet high. When you are in a city with a lot of construction, it seems as if there is an entire city skyline featuring these cranes.

When you have been hurt on a construction site, the one constant is that you will have the ability to file for financial compensation for your injuries. How you are compensated as an injured worker and who pays your claim depends on the type of your injury and what happened.

While there is the standard workers’ compensation system that is available to pay work-related injuries, you will want to try to find other potential defendants for your personal injury lawsuit because your recovery can be greater outside of the worker’s compensation system.

The first thing that you should do after a construction site accident is hire an attorney to figure out how the accident happened and who was at fault. Absent exceptional circumstances that we will discuss below, you cannot sue your own employer for a construction-related injury.

The rate of fatal injuries for construction workers is high in all industries. According to the OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration), around six and a half million workers are employed at more than 250,000 construction sites across the country. The most common dangers faced by construction workers include falls from heights, exposure to electric shock and arc flashes or blasts, negligence during the use of protective equipment, trench or scaffold collapses and recurrent motion injuries.

In short, construction workers face grave dangers that can both be fatal on one hand and seriously hazardous on the other. OSHA has outlined 10 primary standards (as per the agency’s citation in FY 2004) to avoid grievous accidents that include regulations about the scaffolding, ladders, excavations, hazard communication, fall protection, construction, electrical equipment and head protection.

A huge segment of the construction worker industry lost their jobs between 2006 and 2009 during the decline of the US economy when the residential housing industry collapsed, and millions lost their homes because they could no longer pay the mortgage attached to rising interest rates. In the last few years, the need for new houses, remodeled homes, and commercial properties has increased dramatically causing an increasing need to fill an average of 225,000 construction jobs every month.

Because there is a significant decrease in the number of available skill laborers, many contractors are hiring inexperienced workers to ensure their jobs are completed on time. Unfortunately, this has resulted in significant safety concerns about dangerous job sites. (For information on construction accident cases, look here)

Statistics maintained by the US Bureau of Labor and the National Association of Homebuilders show that more than 2.3 million jobs were lost in the construction industry in the five years between 2006 and 2011. Many of these workers had to permanently move away from their construction job and seek employment in other industries, which significantly decreased the number of skilled contractors and laborers trained in framing, bricklaying, concrete work, plumbing, electricity, drywall, roofing, and other needed construction occupations.

Incidences of ladder fall accidents

Among many other workplace accidents that one hears on a daily basis, ladder fall accidents have become very common. According to research, 55.8% of these take place in the construction industry where ladders are used as a common tool. Other incidents of ladder fall accidents are more common in the Warehousing, Service, Trade and Transportation sectors.

Because of this high percentage, these accidents have come under notice of law firms and human right agencies that believe ladder fall accidents are to be classified under the wrongful death law. This attention has resulted in a lot of research that yields a number of causes for ladder fall accidents.