Pickup Truck Accident Kills A Tree Trimmer Foreman

cdc.gov, May 26, 2006

A 21-year-old male tree trimmer foreman (the victim) died after being struck by a pickup truck while feeding brush into a wood chipper. The victim and a co-worker (a climber) had been cutting brush for the local utility company along a powerline right-of-way for 2 days. At 4:30 p.m. on the second day, the two men were feeding the remaining brush that had been cut that day into the wood chipper attached to the rear of their truck.

The victim was walking from the woods with an armload of brush while the co-worker was entering the woods to gather a load of brush. When the victim arrived at the chipper he dropped the load of brush on the ground and began to feed it into the chipper a little at a time. As the co-worker was gathering brush, he heard a loud crash and turned to see that a small pickup truck had struck the victim, then the chipper.

The co-worker pressed the emergency button on the truck radio which alerted the utility company to summon the emergency medical squad (EMS). When the EMS arrived, they could not detect any vital signs and summoned the county coroner, who pronounced the victim dead at the scene. The driver of the truck was lifeflighted to the hospital in critical condition. NIOSH investigators concluded that, in order to prevent similar incidents, employers should:

• Ensure that a flagman or lookout is present while work is being performed on the sides of roadways normally open to the public
• Ensure that employees wear high visibility clothing while performing operations on the sides of roadways normally open to the public.