OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14330716
CHEST,ASPHYXIATED,FRONT END LOADER,ROLL-OVER,DRIVER,CRUSHED
Event description
EMPLOYEE KILLED BY FRONT END LOADER ROLLOVER
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was driving a large rubber tired front end loader down and across th ses to the accident. Employee #1 had been given approximately 80 hours of superv ised instruction in loader operation and had 4 to 6 weeks operating experience. He had driven the loader on this road several times previously. Damage to the lo ader indicated it was traveling at a very low rate of speed when it went off the road. Past accident tests of the loader did not reveal any defects with the ser vice brakes, steering, or hydraulics. The medical examiner ruled out a heart att ack as the cause of death, but could not rule out the possibility that the emplo yee lost consciousness while operating the vehicle. The reason the loader left t he roadway could not be determined. e face of a steep hillside on an access road built by the employer. There were n o guardrails or beams at the road edge to prevent vehicles from going off the ro ad and down a forty five degree bank. Employee #1 was nearly at the bottom of th e road when the loader rolled off the side of the road, falling 9 feet 6 inches down the bank to the ground below. The loader rolled 180 degrees, landing upside down. Employee #1 was crushed between the 33,000 pound loader and the ground. T he vehicle was a Case Model W-26B, Serial Number 9107574, manufactured late in 1 971. It was not equipped with a rollover protection system. There were no witnes
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 49 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 5
- Event type
- 2
- Source
- 27
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 18
- Environmental factor
- 8
- 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.