Mining’s Hidden Hazards: Why Mining Safety Tech Needs a Simpler Touch

By T.J. Ryals, Director of Business Development, Americas at Speedshield Technologies

It’s no secret that Canada’s mining industry is one of the largest in the world, producing more than 60 different metals and minerals including potash, uranium, aluminum and nickel. As of 2025, the sector accounts for roughly 700,000 jobs and more than a fifth of the country’s exports.

But it’s also one of the riskiest industries, with a fatal injury rate six times that of all other private industries. Machinery and transportation equipment are among the leading causes of both fatal and non-fatal injuries, with companies potentially facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in claims and payouts. Any impact on the safety and wellbeing of those working in mining or mining-adjacent sectors is a tragedy, particularly when such incidents can be avoided, and in recent years the number of injuries and fatalities has fallen due to increased regulation in the sector. But regulation is only the start. With innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) and embedded technology, more can be done.

The next challenge is making that innovation practical for the people who rely on it. Without thoughtful design, even advanced technology can become a distraction rather than protection. Too many systems work against workers rather than for them, sounding false alarms or disrupting their workflow with repetitive sirens and buzzers that erode their concentration. According to one academic research paper that focused exclusively on the mining sector, consistent exposure to repetitive audible alerts is one of the primary contributors to mental fatigue.

So, at what point do these safety systems begin to undermine safety itself? And at what point does ‘the boy who cried wolf’ – in this case, countless false alerts – start to get taken less seriously?

The alarm that cried wolf

Let’s make one thing abundantly clear – this isn’t about blaming workers for lapses in concentration or choosing to ignore alarms. In mining, false positives are everywhere: a cone mistaken for a person, a shadow across uneven ground, or a mechanical arm shifting position. Each of these can trigger alarms designed to jolt an operator into action. But when those alerts happen dozens of times an hour, they lose all meaning. In an industry where seconds can be the difference between a close call and catastrophe, that erosion of trust and urgency is a risk in and of itself.

This is why many miners end up silencing alerts altogether or switching off sensors. Not out of carelessness, but because they have a job to do. In already stimulus-heavy environments filled with vibration, radio chatter, and visual clutter, an unreliable system quickly becomes more of a hindrance than a help. The responsibility doesn’t lie with workers who disengage. It actually lies with safety technologies that fail to distinguish between nuisance and necessity. Without precision, alarms are little more than background noise, and once trust is gone, regaining it is almost impossible.

Outpaced protocols

For all the digital transformation sweeping the mining sector, many safety protocols remain rooted reactive standards. Paper checklists, generic proximity rules, and rigid zone delineations are still common practice, often treated as a box-ticking exercise rather than a living layer of protection. These approaches falter in environments where heavy mobile equipment moves unpredictably, conditions change by the minute, and the lines between ‘safe’ and ‘unsafe’ zones blur constantly.

Struck-by and caught-in / between accidents continue to be leading causes of fatalities in mining, with haul trucks, loaders, and light vehicles representing some of the most persistent dangers. Too often, the underlying belief is that installed technology will ‘catch everything,’ creating complacency in protocols that no longer reflect the realities of modern operations.

This gap becomes most visible in incident investigations, where outdated procedures collide with outdated tools. A proximity system designed for a warehouse floor struggles on a steep, rutted ramp. A checklist signed at the start of a shift doesn’t account for dynamic pedestrian movement throughout the day. And a detection model calibrated to flag any moving object will inevitably drown operators in false alerts. The problem often overlooked is that the safety processes put in place are simply mismatched to the environment.

When rules, training, and technology aren’t designed for the realities of high-risk mining conditions, they create vulnerability gaps rather than closing them. So, if modernization is long overdue, how should it look?

Complex technology, simple operation

Operators are already juggling multiple screens, radios, gauges, and controls, and the last thing they need is another interface demanding constant attention. Not all risks are the same, and people are a company’s most valuable asset. Many safety systems are overly complex, flooding operators with constant alerts. Instead, the focus should be on practical solutions that target the most serious hazards and support workers in staying safe and effective. If an alarm triggers, it triggers for a reason – a light that flashes when a pedestrian is nearby, or a voice prompt that cuts through noise only when it truly matters. Operators don’t need more sophisticated interfaces; they just need simple signals that get it right.

Take stereoscopic machine vision or edge-based AI as an example. The technology behind it is cutting-edge. It analyzes depth, posture, and movement patterns in milliseconds, and is able to distinguish a human from another object with incredible accuracy – far more than a basic proximity sensor. But the output is deliberately stripped down. Instead of overloading operators with endless data points, it stays silent until there’s an immediate collision risk, then delivers a single, unmistakable cue. This simplified interface is what makes it usable in the chaos of mining. Workers don’t have to interpret a busy screen or sift through alerts; they just need to know when to act. In practice, the systems that win trust are the ones that keep their intelligence hidden in the background, surfacing only when lives are on the line.