Category Archives: seatbelt

Buckle Up on the Construction Equipment

We often give a lot of importance to the safety of heavy equipment but when it comes to safety of the operator, we perhaps do not think much about it. It is not that we do not consider the safety of the operator to be important but it is for some reason have always taken a backseat and even the operator is not much bothered about it. You can hardly find any construction company who will ask his operator to buckle up his seat belt while he is working on the construction equipment. Though it is considered to be one of the most important safety processes to follow but not many operators take it seriously.

Buckling up on the construction equipment can prevent from colliding with the window of the machine when the machine hits something hard while in motion. However, people who drive trucks are often found wearing their seat belts. It is therefore to be understood that people are of the opinion that the chances of accidents happening while working in a construction equipment is far lesser than it is while driving a truck on the road. People may have the believe that since they are driving on the highway where there are other vehicles that move at a very high speed, there is always a chance of an accident and therefore buckling up can end up saving their lives.

But when it comes to heavy equipment they see that in a different way. They then feel that there is no point in buckling up when you do not have other construction equipment working at the same time and therefore there will be no collision. However, they forget the fact that while working in a construction machine, one has to go through a lot of jerks and if they can’t handle those jerks properly then there is a chance for them to come rolling down from the cabin to the ground. Though such types of instances are quite rare in nature but one can’t dismiss its vulnerability.

Now there are some heavy equipment on which you have to buckle up while you are working inside the cabin. The seat of the machines is positioned in such a way that you will fall if you do not buckle yourself properly. These seats are known as skid-steer suspension seats. Operators who work on excavators feel it is a must to wear seat belts for them. The machine keeps on jumping and one finds it to be extremely difficult to work if he is not buckled up. Excavators work on bumpy surfaces and therefore it bounces a lot which makes the operator to lose his seat every now and then. He will not be able to operate the machine if he is not able to position himself well on the seat and therefore it becomes a must for operators of excavators to wear belts.

Some construction companies are very stringent when it comes to buckling up on construction equipment. They just do not want any sort of untoward incident to take place for a silly reason like not buckling up.