Britain’s safety regulator has today, 25 October, issued a safety notice on the use of wheeled loading shovels, widely used in the waste and recycling sector.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) notice follows nine fatal vehicle-pedestrian collisions in the past four years. Six of these occurred in the waste and recycling sector, with the remainder involved moving wood chip.
HSE has identified issues of poor visibility caused by the bucket and load, the engine at the rear and the cab pillars, significantly reducing the drivers’ ability to see pedestrians and, to a lesser extent, other vehicles. The use of larger capacity buckets, which has become common practice where low-density material is being moved, makes forward visibility significantly worse.
Regulation 4 of The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 (PUWER) requires machinery to be suitable for the purpose for which it is used. This also applies if the equipment is adapted, for example by fitting a larger bucket.