OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #822239
FRACTURE,SINGLE PIECE RIM,WORK RULES,MECHANIC,EXPLOSION,RESTRAINING DEVICE,INFLATING,STRUCK BY,FACE,TIRE
Event description
Employee's face fractured when struck by exploding tire rim
Investigation abstract
At approximately 12:10 p.m. on January 5, 1989, Employee #1, a tire mechanic, wa ved for use with the tire changer. Employee #1 also did not check the air pressu re with a gauge. To complete the inflating process, he attached the air hose, wh ich was part of the tire changer and had a clip on the chuck. Employee #1 had re moved the hold-down cone (restraining device) before the tire was firm. Charts a nd the manufacturer's critical safety warning and operation instructions for the tire changer were not available. The employer did not have a safety program to instruct employees on how to service single piece rim wheels. s in the service area of a shop using a Coats 40-40 SA tire changer to mount a n ew Dunlap radial all- purpose tire and single piece rim wheel. The tire, size 23 2/85R16 (16 in. bead diameter with a 16 1/2 in. head diameter), did not look rig ht to the employee while he was inflating it, so he leaned over it to check the bead. As he did, the tire exploded. The tire and rim struck him in the face and he was hospitalized for treatment of facial fractures. Employee #1 had not check ed the sizes of the tire and the rim before mounting the tire. To set the bead, he used an air hose with 115 psi without a clip-on chuck. The hose was not appro
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 26 M
- Nature of injury
- 12
- Part of body
- 9
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 2
- Occupation code
- 885
- Human factor
- 18
- 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.