He informed me that when a pilot is bringing a commercial jet in for a landing any place in the world that the language spoken between the tower and pilot is English and there is a protocol which must be adhered to. The current Commercial Airline Fatality Rate is 0.023 fatal accidents per 100,000 departures, according to a document from May 2007.
The construction industry could take a page out of the FAA book and dramatically improve the incident rate in regards to communication errors. Safety is just cheap talk unless it is practiced. We have standard crane hand signals and we should have standard verbal crane signals. ASME tried to get it done but let political correctness get in the way. Now Cal-OSHA has taken the Signal-Rite system to the standards board for inclusion into Title 8. Hopefully this will be the start to a steady decline of crane accidents that are communication related.
Jeff York, president, Signal-Rite, USA
