24.11.2013
Man falls after bus hits lift
A man was seriously injured in Leicester, UK on Saturday, when he fell around five or six metres from the boom lift he was using, after it was struck by a bus.
Details are scant but the reports we have received claim that the man was operating the boom lift alongside a busy road outside a car showroom when the double deck bus clipped the basket, whipping it round and bouncing the man out of the platform.
This suggests that he was not wearing a harness and lanyard – or the lanyard was not attached.
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The scene on Saturday in Leicester
Sadly neither the bus nor the platform look to be too badly damaged, indicating that had he been wearing the relevant safety gear he may well have been unhurt. However we must stress that this has yet to be confirmed. We understand that the injuries the man sustained may be life threatening.
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The bus clipped the platform
clem
I'd like to comment on the issue with not having enough safe falling clearance necessary with a manyard/lanyard. The correct connector when one has issues with safe fall distance would have been a self retracting lanyard. This being said the employee still should not have been working in this dangerous position.
Alan Howes
Latest media reports suggest that the cherry operator’s condition is still very serious but now stable.
Regarding the correct selection and use of fall protection in boom type platforms, it is interesting to note that the updated and current guidance given by IPAF in their Technical Guidance Note H1/08/12 has been amended from the previous H1/05/05 and no longer excludes an energy absorbing device.
H1/08/12 Fall Protection in Mobile Elevating Work Platforms / Boom Type Platforms:
“When working from a boom type Mobile Elevating Work Platform (MEWP), it is strongly recommended that a full body harness with an adjustable lanyard be used to provide work restraint. The lanyard should be adjusted to be as short as possible and may contain an energy absorbing device”.
My question is… would a side impact of this magnitude be enough to deploy an energy absorbing device and throw an operator out of the platform?
I wanted to comment anonymously on the above story, because I work for an AWP manufacturer and my comment comes from me personally and not my company: Man falls after bus hits lift.
It could have been that the operator was in fact wearing a fall arrest harness; however, you need at least 5.5 meters to safely deploy it to it's full length without hitting the ground.
A double decker bus is roughly 4.5 metres tall, and looking at the photos, I'd say that the platform height was around 3.5 metres at impact: Not enough distance to rely on a fall arrest lanyard.
The correct harness, if I'm correct on the impact height, would have been a short lanyard, designed to prevent ejection at low heights. The operator should then switch over to a fall arrest lanyard at 5.5 meters above the surface below.
I often seen people working at 'low' heights with a fall arrest lanyard that is simply too long to save them in the event of a fall. This could be one such case.
Of course, not withstanding all of the above, he clearly should not have been operating the platform over the road.