29.09.2008

Outriggers required

A 27 year old window cleaner, from Neu Ulm, was badly injured last week in Germany after he fell around five metres when the spider lift he was using tipped over after he had extended the lifts boom without setting its outriggers.
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Spider - outriggers = overturning

The man was working on the Ammerbau library of the University of Tübingen, south of Stuttgart. The man was taken to Hospital and kept in overnight due to the serious nature of his injuries.

How he was able to raise the boom without setting the outriggers we do not know, clearly he had either not been trained or he had purposely overridden the interlocks in order to convert the machine into a fully self propelled unit?
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An even worse photo of the accident

- We apologise for the quality of the photos, we assume they were taken by an older mobile phone?

Vertikal Comment

It is fairly rare to see this type of accident on a spider lift. The chances of maintaining stability without setting the outriggers are just so low and the interlocks are generally not easy to cheat.

It is hard to understand how anyone given even the most basic familiarisation would make such a mistake?