£8,000 fine after driver is impaled by barrier
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Henry Williams Group was fined after a steel bar smashed through a truck windscreen and injured the driver
By Roger Brown
A DARLINGTON engineering firm has been fined £8,000 after a steel barrier smashed through the windscreen of a truck and impaled its driver through the chest.
In a prosecution brought by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Darlington Magistrates’ Court was told how Jason Ripley, 42, was delivering timber to Henry Williams Group in Dodsworth Street in the town in August 2008.
A horizontal swing barrier on the site, which consisted of a 6m long, 60mm diameter steel tube, had been left open by a Henry Williams Group employee to allow Ripley access to the unloading point.
Ripley had reversed his flat-bed lorry through the open barrier so that timber on the left side could be unloaded.
He then intended to drive back past the gate to turn the vehicle around and return to unload goods from the other side. However, as he drove towards the open barrier on his way through, the end of the horizontal bar was not visible, as it had partially swung back into the carriageway and the surrounding foliage, and its face-on position made it difficult to see.
The court was told how the tube hit the front of the lorry, breaking through the windscreen, and penetrating Ripley’s chest on the right side.
Ripley received three smashed ribs and damage to one lung, which caused a 3in to 4in diameter exit wound in his back. After being cut free by fire fighters, he was airlifted to hospital with part of the barrier still embedded in his chest.
Ripley was off work for 10 weeks but has since made a full recovery.
The HSE investigation revealed Henry Williams Group had failed to assess the risks involved with vehicles driving on and off the site, and there was no means of securing the swing barrier in the open position.
Henry Williams Group pleaded guilty to one breach of Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and was ordered to pay costs of £7,424.80.
The company was also told to pay a £15 victim surcharge, the proceeds of which will be spent on services for victims and witnesses.
HSE inspector Jonathan Wills says: “Mr Ripley was in an horrific incident and the real tragedy is this incident could have so easily been avoided. If the barrier had been secured when it was opened, it would not have been left in such a way that the driver was unable to see it.
“Every year a significant number of people are killed in incidents involving vehicles in the workplace and many more people are injured.”