Avoiding Fatalities: Police Officer Run Over by a Dump Truck

This video is part of series of animated videos, created by ARTBA as a part of the FHWA Cooperative Agreement DTFH61-11-H-00029 and the OSHA Cooperative Agreement SH-24861-13-60-F-11. This video series is based on actual fatalities as investigated by the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health (NIOSH) and documented in NIOSH Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) reports. The videos follow the course of the accident and subsequent fatality and provide recommendations designed to control or eliminate the identified risk.

On November 2, 2001, a 66-year-old male municipal police officer (the victim) was fatally injured while working a traffic detail (controlling traffic) at a highway construction site (work zone). The victim was on site to direct traffic around the work zone and to direct construction equipment entering and exiting the work area. The dump truck involved in the incident was loaded with asphalt and located inside the construction site. The task to be performed was to finish paving a small section of a turnout that was located inside the construction site immediately north of an intersection. The dump truck driver was asked by the general contractor to back to the unfinished section of the turnout approximately 1,000 feet away. The victim was standing at the edge of the construction work zone in the closed northbound right-hand travel lane. He was facing oncoming traffic and had his back to the backing dump truck when he was struck and backed over by the truck. Two witnesses, a mother and her child, stopped to report the incident. Calls were placed for emergency assistance and the victim was pronounced dead at the scene. Taken from FACE summary — Massachusetts Case Report: 01-MA-039-01