Forklift Safety Data State-level forklift injury data, OSHA compliance guides, and vendor-neutral safety-system comparisons

Home / Methodology

What we track, and where every number comes from

Every figure on Forklift Safety Data is derived from a committed source snapshot: a versioned copy of the source data with its retrieval date and licence recorded. Nothing is fetched at build time and nothing is invented.

  • states covered 21
  • Topics tracked 3
  • Observations published 1,125
  • Source snapshots 647

Counts are read from the current derived build (derived/_summary.json), generated August 21, 2026. The snapshots they come from are listed below.

The dataset

One committed snapshot supplies every published figure. States appear only when the source reports them and the coverage floor declared for the topic is met, so a missing state means missing data rather than a zero.

  • OSHA Severe Injury Reports

    3 series · 2015–2025 · Retrieved August 21, 2026 · Licence: U.S. public domain (OSHA, U.S. Department of Labor severe injury reporting data)

How a number reaches a page

  1. Snapshot

    A copy of the source dataset is committed to the repository together with its publisher, URL, licence and retrieval date. 647 snapshots are committed behind this build.

  2. Derive

    Every published figure is computed from those files: latest observation, change, peak, trough and rank. Observations for an unregistered state, or outside a topic's declared bounds, are dropped rather than guessed, and each drop is recorded with its reason (957 in the current run).

  3. Validate

    The derived files are re-checked before anything is built: each formatted figure has to reparse to the value it came from, and each generated sentence has to contain that figure and its year. A mismatch fails the build.

  4. Build

    Every page is built only from those checked-in files. Nothing is fetched while the site builds, so a figure on a page is always traceable back to the snapshot and retrieval date that produced it. The current derived data was generated August 21, 2026.

Tracked topics

  • Forklift accidents: measured in severe injury reports; a lower value is better; primary series SIR.FORKLIFT.TOTAL from the osha-sir snapshot.
  • Forklift amputations: measured in amputation injuries; a lower value is better; primary series SIR.FORKLIFT.AMP from the osha-sir snapshot.
  • Forklift hospitalizations: measured in hospitalization reports; a lower value is better; primary series SIR.FORKLIFT.HOSP from the osha-sir snapshot.

What these figures are not

  • Figures marked as estimates or projections are labelled as such and are not guarantees.
  • Injury figures are drawn from OSHA's Severe Injury Reports, which cover establishments under federal OSHA jurisdiction only. States operating their own OSHA-approved State Plans do not report into this dataset and are not shown. Severe injury reports are a reporting-based measure, not a census of all forklift accidents. Hospitalization figures count employer-filed reports of in-patient hospitalization under OSHA's 24-hour reporting requirement; a zero means no report was filed, not that no injury occurred.
  • This site provides general safety information, not legal or professional advice. Consult a qualified safety professional or attorney for guidance on your specific obligations.

Nothing on this site is fetched while a page is served. Pages are rebuilt only from the snapshots listed here, so any figure can be traced back to the file and the retrieval date that produced it. Where our commercial arrangements sit is set out in the editorial policy.