105,313Records 71,083Employers 85,290Hospitalizations 27,770Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-10-31
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14243406

HEAD,WORK RULES,CONTROL LEVER,RAILROAD CAR,CAUGHT BETWEEN,CRUSHED,MECH MALFUNCTION

Event
HEAD,WORK RULES,CONTROL LEVER,RAILROAD CAR,CAUGHT BETWEEN,CRUSHED,MECH MALFUNCTION
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14243406
Report ID
317000

Event description

Employee killed when head crushed between railroad cars

Investigation abstract

Employee #1, a remote control locomotive operator, was transporting a buggie con taining bins of limestone and scrap steel to the open hearth charging floor area of a furnace. He was uncoupling the buggie cars on the #1 turnout, which had de fective decoupling levers. Employee #1 was apparently taking the slack out of th e cars when he placed his head between them. Because of the defective lever, his head was crushed between the two major bins located at each end of the buggie c ars, and he was killed.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 50 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    13
    Event type
    2
    Source
    38
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    9
    Environmental factor
    4
    Task assigned
    1

Codes shown verbatim from OSHA's accident-investigation database. A human-readable decoder is coming in a future release once the accident_lookup2 dictionary is loaded.