FAQ
Insights and FAQs on active safety
What are the main risks in industrial material handling?
Risks in machine handling:
- Alarming statistics: 61% of warehouse injuries involve material handling equipment; almost 40% of injuries in the manufacturing sector are caused by material handling accidents.
- Economic costs: downtime, compensation, increased insurance premiums, and non-compliance penalties.
- Regulatory obligations: safety regulations impose specific prevention measures for workplace safety — including OSHA 29 CFR 1910.178 (US), EU Directive 89/391/EEC and Directive 2009/104/EC (Europe), and EU Regulation 2023/1230 on Machinery (applicable from January 2027).
- Organizational impact: material damage and productivity loss.
Why do accidents occur in warehouses or manufacturing facilities?
Main causes of industrial vehicle accidents:
- Poor visibility: blind spots of material handling equipment and high-interference zones.
- Pedestrian-vehicle interaction: lack of distinction between operational areas and pedestrian pathways.
- Excessive speed: driving behaviors not compliant with safety limits.
- Absence of zoning: failure to define risk areas and controlled zones.
Read our blog article on industrial vehicle-related accident causes.
What are the main costs of an accident involving industrial vehicles?
Types of accident costs for a company:
- Direct costs: sickness, compensation/insurance, medical expenses, legal/bureaucratic costs.
- Indirect costs: lost productivity, recruitment and training of new resources, overtime, collateral damage to machinery and property.
- Intangible costs: damage to reputation, negative effects on colleagues.
What are Ubiquicom's Active Safety Solutions for industrial environments?
Ubiquicom's Active Safety Solutions are a portfolio of IoT and RTLS-based systems designed to prevent accidents in warehouses, factories, and industrial facilities where forklifts, industrial vehicles, and workers share the same operational space. Unlike passive safety measures such as barriers, floor markings, and signage, active safety solutions detect and respond to dangerous conditions in real time.
How do Ubiquicom safety solutions comply with workplace safety regulations?
Ubiquicom's active safety solutions support compliance with EU workplace safety directives and national regulations including Italy's Legislative Decree 81/2008, the EU Machinery Directive, and ISO 3691-4 (safety requirements for industrial trucks operating in shared workspaces with pedestrians). The systems provide the technological infrastructure to meet risk assessment obligations under these regulations, document near-miss and incident data for regulatory reporting, and demonstrate active risk mitigation measures to labor inspectors and insurers. Automated logging of safety events — with timestamps, location, and asset identity — creates an auditable evidence trail that passive safety systems cannot provide. Ubiquicom supports customers in mapping product capabilities to specific regulatory requirements.
What is the difference between active and passive safety systems?
Passive safety systems — physical barriers, painted floor zones, speed bump ramps, and safety signs — establish static boundaries that do not respond to real-time conditions. They rely entirely on worker compliance and cannot adapt when a forklift exceeds speed limits or a pedestrian enters a danger zone undetected. Active safety systems, by contrast, continuously monitor the position and behavior of every tagged vehicle and person in real time and intervene automatically when unsafe conditions arise. Ubiquicom's active safety portfolio detects proximity violations, triggers immediate bilateral alerts on both the vehicle operator and the pedestrian, enforces speed restrictions electronically, and logs every event for safety analytics. This dynamic response addresses the root causes of industrial accidents rather than simply marking risk areas.
Lower insurance premiums
Incident reporting
Injury reduction
Regulatory compliance