15.08.2022

Self Drive boom overturn

A man was severely injured when the aerial lift he was using overturned in south Sydney, Australia, on Saturday.

The man, 32, was painting the eaves of a four storey apartment block in Allawah at a height of around 15 metres, when the platform - a Niftylift SD170 - overturned with the platform crashing to the ground with the man inside. A man who heard the impact of the platform on the ground called the emergency services. When the ambulance arrived, the man was only semiconscious and clearly suffering from severe head injuries. He was placed in an induced coma and rushed to hospital, where his condition is said to be stable.
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The lift did not have its outriggers set, but as it was working on the sloping drive, it looks as though the operator had driven the lift onto some wood blocking/cribbing to level it and had somehow managed to override the interlocks to raise and extend the boom and riser over the front of the machine. Whether the cribbing shifted, or the machine was simply unstable at the outreach without the outriggers set, we do not know.

The following video shows the scene.