Ultra-wideband (UWB) supports serious injury and fatality (SIF) prevention by measuring the distance between tagged forklifts and tagged people precisely enough to warn both sides, and on compatible forklifts to reduce speed, before a high-energy contact. Because each close approach is logged with time, place and distance, UWB also turns forklift-pedestrian interactions into a leading indicator that safety teams can track by zone and shift. Its main limit is coverage: UWB only protects people who carry a working tag, so visitors and contractors without one need another layer, such as camera-based pedestrian detection.
UWB tags estimate range from the travel time of short radio pulses, a method less affected by steel racking than signal-strength location. Fixed anchors can add zone logic at doors, docks and crossings, so alerts trigger where exposure is real rather than across the whole floor. SIF prevention for forklift fleets places detection inside a wider serious-injury program.
Before buying, check tag battery life and charging routines, how the system handles people walking in groups, how slowdown connects to each truck (CAN-bus or a separate speed-control interface), and what the interaction log exports. Proximity detection technologies compared sets UWB against RFID, camera, radar and LiDAR.