31.01.2015
Crane Outrigger catches cars
The outrigger beam on a city type All Terrain crane badly damaged three cars as it extended while travelling to a job in Farnham, Surrey, in the UK yesterday.
The crane, a two axle Demag owned by Terranova Crane Hire, was driving down a residential street in the early hours when the beam extended, damaging three cars, but fortunately causing no injuries.
Please register to see all images
The rear outrigger extended as the crane moved down the street
A statement from Surrey Police stated: “Surrey Police was called to Upper Hale Road, Farnham at 5.22am today following a collision involving a Vauxhall Corsa, Ford Fiesta, Volkswagen Golf and a mobile crane. The crane experienced a hydraulics failure, causing the support leg to be extended outwards there were no injuries.”
Alec Glover of Terranova is quoted in the local newspaper as saying: “These cranes have certain safety features, the riggers cannot deploy while travelling, but the rigger deployed itself. It bypassed its safety features and opened while travelling. We are in the process of speaking to the manufacturer about what caused this. The crane driver could not see the leg being deployed, if he had seen it he would have stopped.”
Please register to see all images
The cars are cleared
Vertikal Comment
Incidents involving extending outrigger beams during travel - while not so uncommon with loader cranes - are exceptionally rare with All Terrain cranes, and is likely to be related to some form of contamination in the hydraulic system or an electrical fault.
Dave Smith
Something similar happened in 2004 to an AC30 city crane. Front rigger was pulled out by a roddredenden bush when leaving site, and then proceeded to move out as the crane drove up the road through a village. The op was accused by his employers of not stowing the crane away correctly despite the entire site saying he had. Terex Demag came down investigated and with the help of a bit of 2 x 2 it was proved that the rigger beam could be pulled out with external pressure thus over ridding the sprung steel catch that hold the beam in place. No one was hurt but a BMW was written off. Damage to crane, a few scrapes on the paint work of the beam/foot.
Sean Zhang
The PTO drives outtriger is a engine-dependent type PTO, is it?
The hydraulic system shall have it own saftey features, but why it can bypass? i strongly doubt that some contamination in hydraulic system.
lambsy
It is not possible for this outrigger to deploy on its own while the crane is in road driving mode . ie - when the crane arrives on site the suspension is locked and then the pto switch is engaged , and only then is the hydraulics system live to deploy the outriggers ect. A warning would be on and a buzzer if an attempt was made to drive on the road with the pto still engaged , did the warning light and buzzer fail at the same time ?
david pacitti
Look on the top of the out-rigger, you can see the foot pad, was it placed there? when it fell off? while there is a possibility of hydraulic failure, it would not cause the foot to be there
Mac
Not sure what the special blocking tool is . I carry outs tests on the original crane in Germany and drove these cranes for a number of years and they were not fitted with outrigger pins .Were these special blocking tools a ex factory extra ?
Outriggers should be blocked during travel and when crane set up. There is a special outrigger blocking tool made for this type of crane for during travel. Fortunately he damaged cars instead of pedestrians or cyclists.