Which rental jobs carry the greatest risk of injury?

Three quarters of all major accidents among equipment rental firms happen to workers involved in just three job functions – mechanics, delivery drivers and traffic management operatives – a new study has found, but machine operators run a greater risk of suffering serious injury.

The study, put together by the European Rental Association (ERA) as part of its new Occupational Safety and Health toolbox, analysed accident report data from six major European rental companies for 2022 to find out where and how they happened most frequently.

Source: ERA data

Participating companies were UK-based Nixon Hire, France-based rental firms Loxam and Kiloutou, Dutch headquartered Boels Rental, German rental specialist Zeppelin Rentals and Sunbelt Rentals which has a large UK operation.

The study found that the companies which together employed 21,602 employees during the period logged 531 accidents over the course of the year, resulting in a total of 4,068 lost working days or 32,500 lost working hours.

This meant that on average each accident accounted for 61 lost working hours.

Peter Cavada, one of the authors of the report, told Rental Briefing that the new data could be used by rental companies in future to improve safety standards. 

“Current industry safety performance analyses are hampered by the absence of clearly defined, sector-specific benchmarks. This deficiency prevents an accurate comparative analysis and impedes the identification of best practices,” he says.

“By utilising the currently available information, member companies can expedite the identification of critical safety risks and prioritise interventions based on concrete data,”  “This can potentially lead to optimised resource allocation and the implementation of impactful safety strategies.”

Overall, the ERA survey found that accidents involving mechanics were greatest cause of time off work, accounting for a total of nearly 13,000 missing work hours. Delivery drivers were the second most likely to be laid up off work due to a mishap, accruing a total of around 6,000 missing work hours over the period and injuries to traffic management workers accounted for another 5,700 missing work hours over the period.

Firms were also asked to calculate their Lost Time Incident (LTI) rate – a commonly used ratio giving the number of LTIs divided by the total hours worked during a single financial year.

What is a Lost Time Incident Rate?

The calculation, which takes into consideration the numbers of workers engaged in each activity, allows rental companies to benchmark their injury rate against others both within the industry and outside it, and also to compare the frequency of injuries for different types of workers.

This showed that although mechanics were responsible for a greater overall number of missing work hours, the job function with the highest LTI and therefore the greatest incidence of missed working hours due to injury was machine operators. This was followed by delivery drivers, inspectors and traffic management workers. 

Cavada says that especially high LTI ranking for machine operators was likely to have been influenced by a significant outlier from a single participant which has prompted further investigation.

Source ERA data

The average LTI of the industry sample stood at 14.4 according to the report. This compares unfavourably with other industries.

The most recent data from the US-based Bureau of Labor Statistics, which found that the average incidence rate of non-fatal workplace illnesses and injuries in private industry in 2023 stood at just 2.4 cases per 100 full time workers.

“Inter-industry and intra-industry safety performance variations, driven by inherent risk exposures across distinct work functions, necessitate targetted accident prevention strategies,” Cavada says. 

“While acknowledging ‘the nature of the beast’ - that differing work environments yield varying risk levels - focussed interventions within high-risk work functions present a significant opportunity to elevate overall industry safety performance and reduce accident rates.”

By far the majority of injuries reported by rental companies were to the hand or the arm. According to the survey 24.3% of accidents caused hurt to the hand and 13.3% affected the arm.

The survey found that the top root causes of accidents was contact and collision, followed by slips, trips and falls, minor trapping and heavy crushing.

Separately, the International Powered Access Federation (IPAF) maintains a worldwide database of accident statistics relating to the use of aerial platforms, a major part of many rental fleets. Statistics are based on submissions by IPAF’s members around the world, with data then aggregated and reported anonymously. The report for 2024 is available now.