My Story
It’s 10 years today (20th June 2021) since my accident which involved a 33 feet fall from height and then landing on a wall that almost killed me. With this in mind, I wanted to mark the occasion with something positive.
I was lied to by my employer and told that he had an H.S.E. dispensation allowing his employees to work at height without wearing safety harnesses or fall protection equipment. On my first day as a Heating Engineer, I asked for someone to foot my ladder to stop it moving. However, I was quickly told “We don’t foot ladders here because the boss isn’t going to pay for someone to stand at the bottom of your ladder when they could be doing another job somewhere else and making him more money.” Being a Firefighter for 6 years previously, I knew that this wasn’t a safe way of working with ladders but I continued on as jobs were scarce at the time, which in hindsight, was the wrong decision.
Ladder Stabiliser
Whilst I was out doing jobs on my own climbing ladders, I could feel them moving unsafely beneath me. I searched online for a ladder stabiliser that would stop my ladder from moving while I work alone but I could not find any device that would actually prevent a ladder from moving or blowing over from a strong wind. From here, the idea behind Ladder Locker was formed – a product that would use weight to stop a ladder moving, work on uneven ground and force the ladder to always be positioned at the correct angle. Unfortunately, I had the accident in June 2011 just before getting the chance to leave this company as I had planned to do.
Although I should have been wearing a safety harness, I would not have fallen from the edge of the roof if my ladder had been secured properly because it would have stopped me falling the further 20 feet to the ground from the pitched roof and my injuries would have been much less severe. Since 2014, I have been working hard to try to prevent accidents happening to other people through my Motivational Safety Speaking business Safety Up to help make a difference and now I also want to be able to physically stop falls from height by making safe equipment available to everyone. My passion and goal now are to prevent as many falls from height as possible and today, 10 years to the day of my accident, I’d like to unveil my patented invention, Ladder Locker – A one of a kind Ladder Stabiliser.
Ladder Locker will be available for sale soon.
Dylan Skelhorn.