Forklift Safety Statistics for 2026: What BLS, NSC and OSHA Data Actually Say
The latest sourced forklift injury and fatality numbers, the OSHA citation data behind them, and the popular statistic you should stop quoting.
Forklift safety articles tend to recycle the same handful of numbers, and some of them have no traceable source. This is a short guide to the figures that do: who publishes them, what year they cover, and what they tell a warehouse or distribution center about where to focus.
Forklift deaths: 84 in 2024
The National Safety Council, using Bureau of Labor Statistics fatality data, reports 84 work-related deaths in 2024 where a forklift was the source of the injury. The same page reports 25,110 cases with days away from work, job restriction or transfer for 2023–2024. BLS now publishes these case counts on a two-year cycle and changed its injury coding in 2023, so avoid comparing them directly with older years.
The most detailed federal breakdown is older but still useful. A BLS fact sheet counted 614 forklift deaths from 2011 to 2017. In 2017 alone it recorded 9 deaths and about 1,850 nonfatal injuries to pedestrians in incidents involving forklifts, with a median of 20 days away from work.
The statistic to stop quoting
Forklifts are near the top of OSHA's citation list
OSHA's powered industrial trucks standard, 29 CFR 1910.178, ranked #8 among the most-cited standards in fiscal 2025, with 2,150 citations, according to Safety+Health's report of OSHA's final data. It ranked #6 in fiscal 2024 and is #7 on OSHA's partial-year list for fiscal 2026.
Each serious citation can carry a penalty of up to $16,550, and willful or repeated violations up to $165,514. OSHA did not raise these amounts for 2026, so the 2025 figures still apply.
Warehousing runs about twice the average injury rate
In 2024, warehousing and storage (NAICS 493) recorded 4.8 recordable injuries and 4.1 cases with days away, restriction or transfer per 100 full-time workers. For all private industry, the rates were 2.3 and about 1.4. Forklifts are not the only cause, but they are where severity concentrates.
The cost side is documented too. The average workers' compensation claim across all injury types was $47,316 for claims from 2022–2023, according to NSC using NCCI data.
What the numbers suggest you do
- Separate people from trucks where you can. NIOSH has long pointed to pedestrians struck by forklifts as a major share of deaths (NIOSH Alert 2001-109). Marked walkways only work if people use them.
- Measure near-misses, not just injuries. Injuries are rare events at any single site; near-misses happen every day and show you where the next injury will come from.
- Focus on crossings, aisle ends and docks. These are the places where pedestrian and truck paths meet, and where most cameras already point.
- Look at shift changes. Traffic peaks and supervision thins at the same moment.
ElectricEye watches existing warehouse cameras for exactly these moments: pedestrians in forklift lanes, near-misses at crossings and unsafe driving, each sent to a supervisor with the clip. See forklift and pedestrian near-miss detection.