25.01.2011
Traffic management yes..but.
A Vertikal reader in the UK spotted a boom lift working in the street in Warrington, near Manchester earlier this week. The lift user, reportedly a large fabrications company, had taken some steps to ward-off passing traffic by placing bright orange barriers to the front and rear of the lift.
However the placement of the lift meant that it was working over a busy pedestrian route – pavement/sidewalk. Given the standards of the traffic control and the lack of consideration for passing pedestrians - allowing them to pass under the machine, one can only assume that only basic traffic planning had been carried out.
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A good example of poor practice and innadequate traffic control
Our reader did the right thing and approached the contractor to inform him that this method work was far from safe or advisable. The reaction? A simple shrug of the shoulders.
The lift is working on the main A49 road into Warrington.
Vertikal Comment
This is quite a hard one.. yes it is true that working over pedestrians is a no -no, at least the machine is appropriate for the job, it fits into the parking width of the street, it has no tail swing and the risers cannot fall outside of the width of the machine, so there is no chance of a truck clipping any rear boom overhang.
The cordoning-off is not great, in fact it is very poor and almost ineffectual, especially if left like this at night, but there is a clear attempt to do something to ward off traffic. Sad thing is there are plenty of spare barriers that might have been used to warn drivers in advance that the inside lane is blocked.
One wonders if a small spider lift might have been able to work from within the site itself, which is clearly very constrained.
The real danger comes when the operator descends, the dual riser mechanism comes into the path or onto the pedestrians passing beneath. However it looks as though there is a ‘spotter’ at the base of the machine watching out for danger and to stop pedestrians when the boom is lowered?
A Death Wish? Probably not .. bad practice certainly.. dangerous ....yes… but what do you think?
john murphy
as an operator of a truck mounted machine we are often asked to work in situations like this,nobody wants to get things done properly,they could of closed the pavement,put proper traffic management around the boom with a walkway for pedestrians,it's all about money and everybody wants to take chances,customers don't realise the risks of sticking machines on roads because "thay've always done it".with abit of planning and forward thinking all jobs could be done safely,it's about time all of us in this industry took it seriously because the next time somebody sets up any sort of machine in this position and gets hit by an artic or bus we'll all be reading about it on here and saying what a tragedy it was.