Refuse worker crushed after his coat caught in bin lorry
A CORONER has issued a warning after a bin man was crushed to death when his coat got caught and he was carried into the back of a bin lorry.
David Carpenter, 60, died when the vehicle’s compaction cycle started despite him being inside.
A jury concluded the accident which led to his death was “foreseeable”.
In a Prevention of Future Deaths report, Delroy Henry, area coroner for Coventry and Warwickshire, said that action to improve safety in the “hazardous” profession was happening at an ‘inordinately slow’ pace.
The inquest at Coventry Coroner’s Court was told that Carpenter worked as a refuse collector for the city council in a Dennis Eagle lorry, which was fitted with an automatic bin lift system.
The mechanism can lift two household waste bins at a time. The court heard how on Jan 19 2023, Carpenter was lifted into the bin lorry when he “activated the proximity start sensor and his coat became caught on the lifting chair comb tooth associated with the bin security switch”. The automatic compaction cycle caused fatal injuries.
The coroner recorded his death as an accident, but in a letter to lorry manufacturers Dennis Eagle, Mr Henry said: “In my opinion, there is a risk that future deaths will occur unless action is taken. There are thousands of bin lorries of this or similar design still in circulation in April 2024.”
Mr Henry said although new machine designs from Dennis Eagle Ltd have dealt with some issues, they have not addressed “all that arose in the inquest”.
New machines “are very few” compared with the “huge number of the manufacturer’s RCV in circulation”.
Directors of Dennis Eagle are under a legal obligation to respond to the coroner’s recommendations by June 17, the court was told.