Elevator Accidents at Work: When Routine Jobs Become Deadly

Elevators are familiar. We may think nothing of stepping inside, pressing a button, and arriving at the next floor, not considering the mechanics involved. Workers who install, maintain, and repair these same machines see things differently.

Elevators are heavy industrial equipment, and they operate inside tight vertical shafts, suspended by cables, counterweighted with thousands of pounds of steel, and running on complex electrical systems. The margin for error is nearly zero.

Half of all elevator-related deaths each year in the United States are workers, not general elevator passengers. This includes workers who were performing repairs and maintenance or who were using elevators for transportation on the job.

The majority of those deaths happen during routine tasks, not emergencies. And they are preventable. So why do elevators fail, and why do workers pay the price?

The Scale of the Problem

According to the Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR), which draws on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data from 1992 to 2009 and Consumer Product safety Commission (CPSCP) data from 1997 to 2020, elevator incidents kill an average of 28 people and injure 10,200 more each year in the U.S.

Of the deaths recorded in the BLS data, the occupational breakdown illustrates who is actually at risk on the job. Elevator contractors, the licensed tradespeople whose job it is to install and service elevators, accounted for 83 deaths between 1992 and 2009. 77 additional workers were killed while working on or near elevators in jobs that had no connection to the elevator industry at all.

The remaining 103 deaths fell across a wide range of occupations:

• Construction laborers
• Janitors and cleaners
• Building supervisors
• Mechanics
• Ironworkers
• Engineers

Anyone whose work brings them near an open shaft, onto a job site where an elevator is being installed, or into a building where elevator maintenance is underway, is potentially at risk.

There is some limited good news in the trend data. The rate of elevator-related deaths among construction workers fell from 29.1 deaths per 100,000 full-time employees in 1992 to 13.6 per 100,000 in 2002. But in between 2006 and 2008, CPWR data showed that elevator service workers still faced a higher rate of work-related death than the average construction worker, a population that already works in one of the country’s most dangerous industries.

Workplace Elevator Accidents: What Workers Were Doing

Direct elevator installation and repair was by far the most dangerous job context. Falls were the leading cause of death; followed closely by caught-in and struck-by accidents, most often a descending elevator car or counterweight being the striking object.

Of the workers who were killed while servicing an elevator, at least 13 of them were found to not have been qualified for elevator repair work at all. They were simply the people available when a jammed or malfunctioning elevator needed to be dealt with. When examining falls specifically, more than one in three workers killed was not a professional elevator installer or repairer; they were someone in another trade who happened to be in or near the shaft when something went wrong.

46 deaths recorded during work inside the elevator shaft or car involved tasks as varied as retrieving objects that had fallen into the shaft to cleaning inside a car or shaft. The workers killed included not only elevator constructors, but also janitors, building managers, and supervisors, people for whom elevator shaft access was incidental to their primary job.

Working near the elevator accounted for the largest share of fall-related deaths in the data. 49 of these deaths involved falls from unguarded or inadequately guarded open shaft edges. 30 of those occurred when an elevator door opened at a floor where the car wasn’t present, because the interlock had failed mechanically or electrically, and the worker stepped through into an empty shaft.

Clerks, janitors, and general office workers who used commercial elevators were also among those killed on the job, most often in exactly this way: a door opened, the car wasn’t there, and by the time the person realized it, there was nothing to stop the fall.

Licenses & Certifications: Who Is Allowed to Work on Elevators

Elevator licensing is regulated at the state and municipal level, not federally. A mechanic licensed in one state may not be qualified to work in another. Large cities frequently impose additional requirements on top of state codes. This creates a patchwork of requirements that contractors must navigate carefully for liability purposes, and above all for worker safety.

Apprenticeship Programs

In most states, anyone who installs, repairs, maintains, or upgrades elevators must be a licensed elevator mechanic. This license typically requires completion of a multi-year apprenticeship, passing both written and practical examinations, documented proof of training or education, and periodic renewal. Some states require background checks or proof of insurance as additional conditions.

One example of a nationally recognized pathway is the four-to-five-year program offered by the National Elevator Industry Education Program (NEIEP), a federally approved apprenticeship program that is operated by the International Union of Elevator Constructors. Completion of a program like this, plus continuing education courses, is the kind of training that qualifies a person to work safely inside of an elevator shaft.

Electrical Certifications

Elevator systems include complex electrical components, and some states require separate electrical licenses or proof of electrical competency for certain tasks. All elevator workers are expected to have electrical safety training that includes lockout/tagout training. What governs the procedures for working on live electrical systems is the National Fire Protection Association’s NFPA 70E, Standard for Electrical Safety in the Workplace.

The National Association of Elevator Contractors (NAEC) offers the Certified Elevator Technician (CET) program to those with experience in the elevator industry. This is the type of training that would equip elevator workers to safely work with all kinds of elevator equipment, including electrical systems.

Inspector Certifications

In most jurisdictions, elevator inspectors are required to be independent of the company that performs maintenance or repairs on the elevator. They inspect for structural integrity, safety device function, door operation, and leveling accuracy. One major form of inspector certification includes the NAEC’s Qualified Elevator Inspector (QEI) Certification.

Safety Training Beyond Licensing

Regardless of license status, elevator workers are owed thorough safety training that covers and provides for:

• Fall protection
• Confined space entry procedures
• Lockout/tagout procedures
• Hazard communication
• Personal protective equipment

OSHA has long taken the position that elevator pits overwhelmingly fit the requirements of being a confined space and are thus subject to confined space standards. That includes the requirement for permits, atmospheric testing, and rescue planning before entry.

Enforceable Standards That Apply to Elevator Work

While there are federal safety codes in place by ASME, those codes cannot be enforced unless a state, city, or business have adopted them, or unless a federal agency like OSHA incorporates and enforces them.

These are some of the main standards that OSHA can enforce for elevator work:

While this patchwork of enforceable standards would be enough to keep most workers safe if followed, the sad reality is that even when OSHA does uncover an employer’s negligence, their regulatory follow-through is weak. If any fines are levied, they might amount to tens of thousands of dollars in egregious cases, but those are costs that most companies can absorb easily.

What Goes Wrong When Safety Codes Aren’t Followed

A person who is pulled away from another job to unjam an elevator doesn’t have this level of training. A maintenance engineer at an office building who is told to “take a look at it” does not have this training. When unqualified workers are placed in those situations, and something goes wrong, the resulting injuries and deaths are not accidents of fate; they are failures of management.

The confined space, weight of equipment, the heights involved, and the moving machinery of an elevator combine to make even a single failure catastrophic.

The primary types of accidents and injuries that workers face around elevators include:

• Falls are the leading cause of death for elevator workers
• Crushing injuries, whether by counterweights, being pinned between the elevator car and the shaft fall or floor, etc.
• Struck-by incidents involving elevator cars, falling tools and debris, or counterweights
• Caught-in incidents with cables, pulleys, or mechanical components and hands, fingers, or clothing getting pulled in
• Electrical shock and electrocution is always a risk with high-voltage electrical components
• Traumatic brain injury from falls and falling objects
• Internal organ damage from crush injuries and blunt force trauma
• Secondary accidents such as drowning in water-filled elevator pits, oxygen deprivation in pits, or other confined space issues

Most of these types of elevator accidents prove fatal for workers.

Who is at fault for these workplace elevator accidents? Reading across various cases from OSHA’s fatality and inspection record, it becomes clear that employers failed their workers time and again. Whether it was lockout/tagout procedures not being in place, fall protection not being provided, or workers being sent into hazardous spaces alone, employers failed to abide by common-sense safety standards that have been clearly spelled out for decades.

Recent Fatalities in Work-Related Elevator Accidents

The following incidents all occurred between 2023 and 2025, and this is not an exhaustive list of even that narrow timeframe.

These are just a sample of the accidents that were reported to and investigated by OSHA. When fines were levied in these and other recent accidents, they were often around $16,000 to $30,000 per incident, and many were merely issued and not paid. Fines were often contested by the employer, sometimes successfully. If a company did pay the fines, by the time they did so, they were often reduced by thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars.

These companies not only failed to protect their workers from exposure to hazards, but they also showed that they would rather spend their time and resources contesting fines than making meaningful, already-required changes to keep their workers safe.

After a Workplace Elevator Accident: What Comes Next

When a worker is injured or killed in an elevator accident, the instinct of employers and even reporters may be to describe it as tragic accident, a fluke. But the pattern in these incidents is not random. The same failures—lockout/tagout failures, unguarded shafts, unqualified workers, and more—appear in case after case, year after year.

These are not isolated failures. They are management failures. And they should carry real legal and financial consequences.

The response of regulatory agencies is inadequate, and the fines don’t help the victims at all anyway. It is possible to bring a legal claim against the parties responsible, if someone was injured or killed in an elevator accident, but such cases are full of complex technicalities. They involve OSHA regulations, ASME and other industry standards, and potentially multiple liable parties, such as employers, building owners, elevator service contractors, and equipment manufacturers.

At Arnold & Itkin, our attorneys regularly handle work accident and premises liability cases, including workplace elevator accidents. We can investigate all of those avenues, cut through the technical language, and pursue fair compensation on your behalf. If you believe you have a claim, don’t wait to get legal advice and help. Make sure you understand your legal rights and how to protect them. After everything you and your loved ones have been through, you deserve answers and justice.