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 #14447924

GARBAGE TRUCK,HEAD,SIGNALMAN,STRUCK BY,FALLING OBJECT,BACKING UP

Event
GARBAGE TRUCK,HEAD,SIGNALMAN,STRUCK BY,FALLING OBJECT,BACKING UP
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14447924
Report ID
552700

Event description

Employee killed when struck by falling sign

Investigation abstract

At approximately 2:40 p.m. on February 20, 1989, a garbage truck owned by Bauer Disposal Service, of Faribault, MN, was about to back into a parking lot from th e street. Employee #1 dismounted the truck to signal the driver backing the truc k. Apparently Employee #1 saw that the truck was about to hit a telephone-type s ign pole. He yelled, waved his arms, and ran to the back of the truck at the dri ver's side. The truck hit the pole, causing the pole and sign to fall. Employee #1 ran to escape the falling sign but was struck on the head. He was transported to District One Hospital, where he died.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 32 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    13
    Event type
    1
    Source
    8
    Occupation code
    875
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    6
    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.