IMPROVING CONSTRUCTION SAFETY BY PROVIDING POSITIVE FEEDBACK ON BACKUP ALARMS

Federally mandated backup alarms and safety management have been unabl e to eliminate fatalities and injuries due to maneuvering trucks and m obile equipment on construction sites. Workers appear to ignore the al arms as part of the general noise level. When reversing, drivers and e quipment operators tend to depend on the alarm's effectiveness to clea r areas in which drivers have limited visibility. Using human factors analysis, the problem was recognized as one of decremented vigilance, a person's natural inability to sustain attention without positive fee dback. This paper presents experimental data on the use of a simulated , discriminating, personal alarm activated by a short range, direction al transmitter to encourage safe behavior. During the experiment there was a significant increase in response time, as expected, for the con ventional backup alarm and a decrease in response time for the discrim inating personal alarm, The proposed backup alarm system has the poten tial to eliminate on-site vehicle/equipment accidents.