Work Injury for Bus Drivers: L&I Issues a New Warning
In my experience, many bus drivers suffer from upper extremity work injury and occupational disease. There are many reasons for these types of workplace injury and industrial illness. In fact, top causes include applying force (in the arms) to drive the bus and repetitive arm movements to operate bus functions. On top, other reasons include miscellaneous activities that relate to bus maintenance.
L&I warns about new work injury condition
If this wasn’t enough for bus drivers to worry about, L&I issued new warnings about upper extremity work injury risks. Recently, the Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) published a news bulletin alerting about a recent increase in shoulder injuries for bus drivers. Per L&I, bus drivers for multiple Washington State agencies reported injuries from opening and closing COVID-19 safety shields. Moreover, according to the news bulletin, drivers must repetitively open and close the shields in awkward positions. In fact, they conclude that the poor design of the shields is causing rotator cuff work injury.
L&I takes work injury occurrences very seriously
L&I developed resources to help Washington State workers and agencies avoid these shoulder workplace injuries. Furthermore, L&I recommends the use of automatic shields instead of manual ones. However, this is not a viable option for many drivers. To help, L&I wrote a manual to modify the shield to increase work safety and reduce injuries.
Interestingly, the full L&I Hazard Alert is available in eleven languages. This hazard alert serves a good reminder: It’s important to take safety precautions against COVID-19. More importantly, employers should think whether safety measures pose risks relating to injury at work for their own workers.
This article was first published on: https://tarareck.com/bus-driver-work-injury/
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Ms. Tara Reck is the managing L&I attorney at Reck Law — Workers’ Compensation Attorneys in Washington State. If you would like more information, please contact Ms. Reck through the following:
* Seattle | Bellevue | Mercer Island office: (206) 395–6141
* Tacoma office: (253) 999–9828
* Renton office: (425) 800–8195
* Port Orchard office: (360) 876–4123
* Email: office@recklaw.com
* Her Workers’ Compensation blog at https://tarareck.com/contact/ or her company website at https://recklaw.com/contact/
