Abstract

Lateral rollovers of forklifts are frequent, and cause an average of four serious or fatal accidents every year. Alarmed by this situation, the CSST, several joint sectoral associations and employers associations asked the IRSST to investigate this type of accident. Previous IRSST studies had established that none of the many safety devices available could make an unequivocal claim to effectiveness; the last of these studies concluded that the development of a biomechanical model of the behaviour of forklift operators during rollovers would facilitate the design and evaluation of appropriate safety devices. The present study established the feasibility of designing such a biomechanical model. Static and dynamic simulations successfully reproduced the kinematic behaviour of forklifts during lateral rollovers. In light of these results, a project has been launched to develop analytical models of forklifts and operators, in order to simulate lateral rollovers at low and high speeds.