Vehicle death was avoidable

Prosecutions and Claims |
15.10.2007

A Merseyside construction contractor has been fined £100,000 following the death of a 20-year-old employee who was hit by a wheeled loading vehicle.
HSE inspector John McGrellis, who investigated the incident, said the death was "totally avoidable".

The accident happened on 1 September 2004 at Grundy and Co Excavations' site in Ditton Road, Widnes. Joshua Beswick, a labourer at the building materials reclamation yard, had been "picking" in the back of a tipper wagon - a quality control measure where the lorry is partly loaded with aggregate (such as crushed brick) due to go out, and workers sift out wood and metal and other unwanted materials.

Beswick had just finished picking a load and was on his own. He climbed off the back of the wagon and made to walk across the yard. As he crossed behind the wagon, he was struck by the wheeled loader and killed instantly.
"They had some risk assessments in place and they had some management systems in place," John McGrellis told HSW, "but they hadn't actually risk assessed the work activity of picking. If they had, they would have picked up that labourers were at risk from the close proximity of the vehicles when they were getting onto and off the wagons."

The HSE investigation found that workers were also at risk of being struck by the bucket on the loading shovel while they were in the back of the wagon, and there was the potential for falls from height when workers were on the top of the loads.

"The simplest thing they could have done was not to pick loads in the back of the wagon but to pick them in a designated area - you can actually pick on the ground from a 'stockpile'," explained McGrellis. "That would have essentially eliminated the most significant potential for contact between pedestrians and vehicles."

The firm implemented such a system after the accident. Grundy was last month fined £100,000 plus £9,034 costs at Warrington Crown Court after pleading guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act for failing to ensure the safety of employees by providing a safe system of work.