Could This Have Been You? On average, 5,000 to 6,000 workers are killed each year. Learn from the following reports of real workplace fatalities to avoid a similar fate. An equipment operator for an engineering firm was operating a backhoe without wearing a hard hat or seat belt. He had been at work for less than 20 minutes and was moving dirt from an upper to a lower embankment of a narrow mountain road. On its second turn, the backhoe went over the embankment and continued 30 feet (nine meters) downhill before flipping on its side. The victim's unprotected head struck […]