It truly is a sad day when you here about the death of an employee, whether they are experienced with many years of service or as in this case a young individual just starting out. But this is not the fault of inspectors. If this young driver was indeed not trained then the burden falls back on the company that he works for, because it is their responsibility to make sure that their employees are fully trained to operate the equipment they will be using.
As for licensing lift trucks and knowing where they are, we number everyone of our trucks and we keep track of there locations at all times, and even in doing this, there is no way this accident would have been prevented just because they knew where the lift trucks were. This accident was caused (if the young driver was indeed not trained) due to lack of training and the lack of supervisors making sure all the lift truck operators were trained, basically by doing a simple part of their jobs, maybe this is where the investigation should start, find out who was not doing their job!!!!! Supervisors and upper management get paid to do their job also and making sure their employees are properly trainined to accomplish their assigned tasks is just a small part of it, and in this case the ball sounds like it was dropped.
I am not a government investigator, but a company trainer and I believe this was (and might still be) a company problem that needs to be fixed immediately!!!!! These types of accidents are preventable, someone just was not doing their job.

Its about time that the people involved in Health and Safety realised that their roll is not to enforce rules whilst walking round in a nice suit carrying a clipboard. Health and Safety is a vocation not a job. The young person mentioned was 18 years old, someone could have and should have taken their vocation seriously enough to ensure this person would not die because of a work place accident. In my humble opinion anyone involved in Health and Safety purely as a job should find some other way of making an easy living.

i am not even going to begin to start naming all the deficiencies with the government inspectors. The behind the scenes garbage is so tantalizing it wold make your hair stand on ends.

Inspectors get paid to work x amount of hours a week to earn their pay. What they do is another story.

Tragic, isn't it. An 18 yr old dies because of lack of training. If it were up to me, license forklifts as they license automobiles. Have these trucks registered so everyone knows exactly where they are located.

Prevention could have possibly prevented this incident, and not 1/2 dozen inspectors running out to the scene after it took place.

You won't change it and neither will I. Too many inept trainers. Too many inept trainers just doing it for the buck. No government control over trainers. Nothing. So what do you expect comes to pass?

Your thread!