30.03.2007

Painter crushed by lift

A man who was seriously injured on Monday while painting at the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus died from his injuries yesterday.

Rejean Chicoine (55) of Springfield, Massachusetts was spray painting for a sub contractor in the campus' new central heating plant, when he became jammed between a roof beam and the guardrails of his aerial lift. He was working alone at the time.

Federal safety regulators and the Northwestern district attorney's office are investigating.

Vertikal Comment

Every few months an accident such as this occurs somewhere in the world, usually caused by an operator leaning over the controls while they are still live thanks to a time delay enable button.

It would seem that this type of accident could be avoided by changes to control ‘dead-man’ devices, i.e. enable buttons.

Fatalities from this type of accident occur infinitely more frequently than accidents arriving from overloading scissor lifts or from gravity drop bar or clamshell platform gates. Where are those regulators that have been so keen to regulate for those non issues on this subject?