Category Archives: texting

Heavy Equipment and Texting is a bad combo

We always like to be in touch with our friends and family members but there are times when the medium that you use to stay in touch with them can prove to be fatal. You may say that you are just trying to communicate a simple thing to someone but if you are communicating you should not do anything else other than talking to the person on your cell phone. You can’t be working as well as talking both at the same time. It just does not go well with each other and has every potential possibility to inflict serious injury to you or to someone else.

Most of the accidents happen while the person driving the car is talking to someone and driving at the same time. Now as far as the talk is normal, he has his sight on the road but if he gets to hear something exciting, his attention gets automatically diverted. So you may have your eyes on the road but definitely not your attention. The chances of you bumping someone on the road increase manifolds.

While you are operating heavy equipment in a construction site, you got to be extremely cautious about what you are doing. It has been seen that many experienced operators use their cell phones and keep on texting people while operating the machine. This is a very bad combination.

The operator may be quite experienced and has superb control over the machine but he is still playing with fire by diverting his attention on the cell phone. It has been observed that texting is more dangerous than speaking over the phone. While you are texting, you continuously have to look at the cell phone and therefore you lose your sight on the site. You will not even get to know if something gets on your way and by the time you realize it may be too late for you to control.

According to a research, it has been noticed that while you are texting, your eyes off the road/jobsite increases by 400% and the chances of moving into a different lane is increased by 28%. So one can simply figure out how dangerous it is to text while you are operating the construction equipment. Now the most horrifying detail is that while you are texting, it increases the chance of an accident by 2000%. These statistics unanimously speak one thing. The construction business owners should put a ban on using cell phones while working on the jobsite. The operators may expect some emergency calls but that can be easily dealt by providing the number of the supervisor on duty. So if there is an emergency in the family, they need to call the supervisor and he will inform the operator.

The contractors should also develop a cell phone free policy for all the operators and also construction workers on the jobsite. This will ensure the safety and well-being of all the employees working on the jobsite.