Garage Door Safety Tips

Garage Door Security:

While on vacation or away from home for extended periods, unplug the garage door opener unit or use a vacation lock on the wall console switch, an optional accessory on Overhead Door® garage door openers.

Consider purchasing a garage door opener with rolling code technology, which changes the access codes each time the transmitter is used.

Overhead Door™ CodeDodger® has been incorporated as a standard feature into our full line of openers since 1995.

Wireless keypads, which activate the garage door opener with a personal identification number (PIN), are available for Overhead Door™ garage door openers. This allows family members to open the door without a key or remote. Never disclose the PIN or leave it written down.

Never leave the remote control in the car or with a parking attendant. It should be treated like a house key.

Always lock the door from the garage to the inside of your home for greater safety and security.

Check to ensure your garage door is closed when you lock your entry doors at night. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Commercial Tips

Instead of hoping everyone exercises common sense, leave nothing to chance and institute strict overhead door operation rules.

Here are some key tips a business should follow:

• Do not stand or walk under a moving door.
• Watch the door until it has finished opening/closing.
• Never leave a door partially open.
• Keep the floor space around the doors open and navigable.
• Do not operate an overhead door while under the influence.
• Wear the proper protective gear when working around overhead doors.

Train your employees

Limit the use of your property’s garage doors to employees who have sufficient training and experience. Others can only use them under close supervision. Making new employees operate the doors with someone watching them might feel silly, but safety is more important than pride.

Implement a detailed training program to ensure your staff knows the best practices for garage door operation.

• Proper vs. improper use
• Accident statistics
• Risk assessments

8 Tips for Loading Dock Safety

Mark floors with tape to identify where walking is off-limits. A common hazard at loading docks is employees being hit by forklifts or other heavy machinery. Marking on the floor where walking is safe will prevent unwanted injury.

Use visual dock communication. Traditional red/green light signals alert trucks to enter and when it is necessary to stop. This is an effective way to communicate with drivers at the loading dock and ensure no accidents occur.

Use locking devices on every truck that comes to the loading dock. This ensures that the trailer will not accidentally separate from the dock. People will likely fall off the dock when separation occurs, and injury can happen.

Clean area regularly. As mentioned above, a common hazard is slipping or tripping due to weather, spillage, or debris left on the floor. Cleaning the area on a regular schedule will decrease the amount of slips, trips, and falls.

Put padding on the edges of sharp corners on the loading dock. Moving product from the truck into the facility can run into uncovered sharp edges and cause injury. Protective padding on edges and corners can easily prevent this.

Secure loose products. Before moving the product to or from the truck, ensure it is secure. Smaller products can fall off and cause tripping, and if more oversized products are unsafe, they can injure employees when being lifted.

Require that all workers are well-informed and follow loading dock safety rules. To ensure all employees know the risks, hazards, and best practices, they must take a short course to learn the appropriate protocols and guidelines for working on a loading dock.

Only OSHA-trained and authorized employees can operate heavy machinery. This ensures everybody’s safety and abides by the law.