$35,000 FINE AFTER TRUCK DRIVER'S DEATH
Tarantino Investments has been fined following the death of a garbage truck driver at Epping after pleading guilty to a single charge of failing to ensure that plant being used for a purpose for which it was supplied was safe and without risks to health.
In December 2019, a subcontracted truck driver was supplied with a side loading trailer to transport a full shipping container from the company's Brooklyn depot to a business in Epping.
After unloading the container, the driver noticed that one of the stabilising legs on the trailer’s crane did not fully retract using the remote control and used manual levers to retract it.
The driver then moved the truck to load an empty shipping container before driving back onto the road without realising that the rear stabilising leg had not fully retracted and was sitting parallel with the ground.
A short time later the protruding stabiliser leg collided with the cabin of a garbage truck travelling in the opposite direction, killing the garbage truck's driver instantly.
An investigation found the wiring of the side loading trailer was in a poor state of repair, having suffered some previous structural damage, and the remote control having been repaired with duct tape and cable ties.
Source: WorkSafe News 03 October
PASSING INSPECTOR NOTICES LACK OF FALL PROTECTION
Prime Roofing supplies and installs metal roofing and cladding for industrial, residential, and commercial roofing.
On 26 March 2020 a WorkSafe Inspector was driving past a Hungry Jacks in Ballarat East when he observed a person standing within two metres of the edge of the roof on the south elevation of the building. The inspector observed that there was no fall protection in place, will a fall height of 3.9 metres.
The inspector took photographs and directed the person down from the roof. Handrails were installed following a Prohibition Notice prohibiting access to the roof area.
The offender's safe work method statement (SWMS) stated safety harnesses ‘may’ be required if the pitch of the roof exceeded 12 degrees. The roof on the south elevation was flat.
An Improvement Notice required the offender to review, and if necessary, revise the safe work the SWMS to control risk of falling.
The offender failed, so far as is reasonably practicable, to reduce the risk associated with a fall at a workplace by using a passive fall prevention device, pleaded guilty and was sentenced, without conviction, to pay $10,000 in addition to costs in the sum of $4,409.
