OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14505879
FRACTURE,AUTOMOTIVE REPAIR,WORK RULES,ENGINE,SKULL,STRUCK BY,FLYING OBJECT,BRAIN,UNGUARDED
Event description
Employee killed when struck by piece of shattered flywheel
Investigation abstract
A mechanic at an auto wrecking yard was testing a Buick 350 engine for knocks, s the fence before landing in front of it. The flywheel was moving at an estimated speed of 2,000 to 2,500 rpm when it shattered. No scatter shield was used on th e flywheel during the testing period. moke, compression, and oil pressure. He had placed the engine on a stand, and si nce it was an automatic transmission, the bell housing and torque converter had been removed to prevent fluids from escaping during the testing. This left the s tarter flywheel exposed. Between 30 and 60 seconds after the engine was started, the flywheel shattered into three pieces. The largest piece flew 15 ft into the yard and struck Employee #1 on the right side of the head, fracturing his skull and resulting in cerebral edema. He was killed. The piece of flywheel continued on its trajectory to a metal fence about 100 ft away. It sliced a 2 ft gash in
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 32 M
- Nature of injury
- 6
- Part of body
- 13
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 26
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 9
- Environmental factor
- 5
- 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.