you know...
i'm really curious how the statistics came about on this ankle injury v/s fork tilt angle point that keeps being mentioned.
How many people had to get ran over (hit in the ankle) before you got a valid statistic?
Seriously there would have had to be several incidents happen in different ways to gain these said stats, where there test subjects? Did they use crash test dummies? Does this happen enough to warranty a specific study on this particular point on injuries to specific body parts from forklift impacts? And what are the study results specifically? (not just a general generalization).
Did you do a nationwide search in every hospital and business for ankle & leg injuries from forklift impacts? Was this general information provided by OSHA in a study?
I'm really curious how many people injured this fact was derived from.
I've been in this industry since 1977 and have seen alot of accidents resulting in all sorts of injuries and even death but this ankle/leg injury from fork impacts i may have only seen a couple of times in my whole career.
And to be honest in all these years and all the safety training classes i've taken, injuries from lifttruck accidents were just generalized and not compartmentalized to specific body parts involved in the accident.
As far as how to travel with the forks positioned or even with the lift being stationary the only points that were given in any of these training classes were :
- empty forks while traveling = low to the ground a couple inches off the floor even/level
- loaded forks while traveling or stationary = tilted back
- forklift parked = forks on the ground with mast tilted forward

these were always the 3 key points that were always given in any of these classes i've taken over the years, they were all from hyster, caterpillar and yale and even through all the management changes and repeated retraining over the years these points were always given and no specific points were changed as far as i remember.
This new method of traveling with forkes tilted up even when empty is something i've never heard of, this discussion is the first time i've ever seen it and makes me think someone is trying to reinvent the wheel here or maybe it is just the difference between European standards and US standards.
And yes i do believe there is a difference, i see it fairly regularly in these discussions on this forum and other venue's as well.

My own personal/professional opinion as to how an operator should travel with forks positioned? they should be level to the floor and low to the floor and tilted slightly forward when unloaded.
when carrying a load always tilted back.

As for injury statistics and trying to change a standard on how forks are positioned, personally i don't think it really matters how they are set, if someone gets hit it will permanently mangle them for life period no matter how the forks are positioned and arguing over the extent of the injury and trying to use that to prove a point or institute a new rule is ludicrous and just plainly nit picking.
Instead of focusing on how an operator carries his forks up or down and beating that horse to death, i think if a plant has issues with injuries and forklifts or are trying to set rules in place to prevent such a thing they should be concentrating on employee safety and how they conduct themselves in the production traffic areas. Wear the appropriate PPE so they can be seen by forklift operators and be especially aware of where the forklifts are around them at all times. Yes the forklift operator is supposed to watch out for pedestrians also but i think it would be safe to say that the majority of accidents/injuries that occur are from the pedestrian being somewhere he/she is not supposed to be and not paying attention of their surroundings putting themselves in harms way. Forklifts cannot stop on a dime and anyone with any common sense knows this.
In the real world pedestrians have the 'right of way' on the road no matter what. In the industrial world pedestrians have a 'right of way' but in most cases all the signage i've ever seen gives the forklift traffic the 'right of way'. It is the employees responsibility to 'watch out for forklift traffic'. If an employee steps out in front of a forklift i don't care how the forks are positioned, it WILL hurt them badly and i do not think it would make much difference whether they are positioned up or down unless the employer is letting the insurance company dictate how the lift is operated based on the extent of an injury based on how it impacts a person and the extent of the injury it can cause. If this is the case then all the OSHA studies and surveys and stats wouldn't mean a thing now would it?

ok i think i've said enough and even managed to throw a new ball into the court...
lets see how this discussion turns now ;o)