Dartford Haulage Firm KBC Logistics Prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) After An Employee Is Crushed By A Reversing Lorry

KBC Logisitics registered at Dartford Road, Dartford, were prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) after the incident in May, and fined £12,000 plus £3,009.80 for prosecution costs.

Leslaw Chorazak, a Polish worker aged 54, who worked as a driver at KBC, was guiding another driver who was reversing at the firm’s depot in Grays, Essex.

Mr Chorazak was bending down to pick up his torch when the driver he was guiding lost sight of him and reversed into him – crushing his right arm, body and collar bone in the process. 

Mr Chorazak had to be kept in hospital for spent several days, and has since returned to Poland.

The HSE investigated the accident and found that the depot was poorly lit and without an appropriate means of traffic management to seperate pedestrians from vehicles, no supervision on site, and the staff  had received no health and safety training for staff.

Yesterday at Basildon Magistrates’ Court, KCB Logistics pleaded guilty to breaching the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.

They were ordered to pay a total of £15, 009.80 (£12,000 fine and £3,009.80 in court costs).

Speaking after the case, HSE Inspector Nicola Surrey said: “This was a small yard used by a large number of lorries which were often forced to reverse as there was no room to carry out a U-turn.

“It was common practice for employees to wander across the yard from the workshop or from where they parked their cars to the office, to and from the diesel tank and to where the lorries were parked making the yard an extremely dangerous environment.

“Working with moving vehicles is a high risk activity which causes significant numbers of major and fatal injuries every year in this country. Mr Chorazak was seriously injured in this incident and it was only good fortune that it did not end in a fatality.”

Last year, 17 workers were killed and more than 530 suffered major injury after being hit by moving vehicles while at work in Great Britain.

We at Advanced Corporate Solutions believe that an appropriate risk assessment would have identified the need for implementing an appropriate traffic management system and improving the lighting in the area. It is also likely that the accident would not have occurred had there been properly trained banks-men to assist the driver. Either way, this accident was easily preventable.

Comments

comments

Comments are closed.