Skip driver crushed
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• A verdict of accidental death was recorded against John Arthur last week when Southwark Coroners Court was lotk.'Icl how he was crushed likainst a wall when a fivetctijme skip he was unloading moved 300 to the side.
It was revealed the tragedy had happened because Arthur, of Gillmore Road, Lewisham, South London had not been warned that he had parked his lorry over a recently dug service drain on a building site.
As he had stood beside the cab of his lorry operating the controls to raise a skip full of ballast, the inquest jury were told, one of two stabilisers at the back of the lorry (used to support it as the skip was raised to an angle of 90°) suddenly gave way.
One stabiliser sank 15cm into the ground, but the other plunged to a depth of more than 45cm, causing the whole lorry to tip sideways. Edward Simmons, a contractor on the site in Claylands Lane, South Lambeth, who had witnessed the accident, told the court that the skip had swung away from the lorry "like a pendulum".
"I have never seen anything like that happen before," said Simmons. "The driver was wedged between the cab of the lorry and the wall and as the lorry tipped up it took him with it."
Simmons explained that on the ground where the stabiliser sank other contractors had dug a 60cm deep trench for a water main only weeks before.
The inquest heard that there had been no warning signs around the trench and no steel plates had been provided to rest the stabiliser on and stop it from sinking. Health and safety inspector Dr Chown explained that the accident had been caused by the confined space the lorry was unloading in and its position above the recently dug trench.
Coroner Sir Montague Levine said: This was an experienced skip driver who was not to know there was anything unusual about that piece of ground. Unless someone had told him there was a trench which had been recently dug he would have no way of being aware of it."
The jury returned a verdict that Arthur's death in St Thomas hospital on 10 August this year from the crushing injuries he had sustained was accidental.