A Caterpillar scraper toward the two-man survey crew

What a horrible way to die

But, surviving might be even more horrible.

Scrapers are inherently dangerous pieces of equipment, mainly due to their (in)ability to stop. The rolling inertia with tires that size is enormous. I've also never met a scraper operator that impressed me with his cognitive skills either.

That along with the fact they have brakes from the factory until they are used when the equipment is delivered and driven off the lowboy. After that, the brakes are almost useless. Their only saving grace is to drop the blade under the bowl.

I'm sad to hear that someone got nailed by one. Pay attention to what's around you folks.

What a tragedy. None of us should ever assume that an operator is aware of our presence.

A few years ago I was working on a subdivision under construction. A man and his son drove up behind a dozer on a 4 wheeler. The operator, who didin't see them backed up. The father was able to scramble out of the way but the son was not. I was fortunate enough not to see it happen, but when I saw the ambulance come in I knew something serious had happened. I saw the 4 wheeler come out on a truck and it was not a good sight.

Always give the equipment a wide path.

None of us should ever assume that an operator is aware of our presence.

AMEN

What a tragedy. I'm sure every one of us has close call stories, know I have more than my share. I will say having been in one or two toolbox meetings safety is priority one, especially with heavy equipment operators.

While there isn't much you can do about the operator moving from one area to another, if someone on heavy equipment is working a specific area where stakeout or as builts are being done, I've always made it a point to communicate with the operator exactly where I'll be working. I've seen everything from laser levels to UTV's run over by heavy equipment, had 8' tall flags I'd put on my trailer and a pop up tent I put over the robot to make it easier on the operators.

I am in awe of how these guys work day to day, more blind spots on an excavator or dozer than I was ever comfortable with when they tried to make a heavy equipment operator out of me.

Years ago in Southern California, while surveying on a HUGE grading site, there were about a dozen Cat Scraper running the circut. One Scraper coming down the grade, went out of control and rolled/tumbled. Came to rest on it's side. The driver was strapped in and OK. They righted it back onto all four wheels, refilled the engine with fluids, back to work, move along folks, no more Kewl sheet to see here. -BbBB-)

I had a chainman that had been run over with a scraper back in his younger days before the backup horns were required.
He got around with a limp. His body was full of steel plates.

Raised around farm and surface mining equipment. Second construction job I was on as grade foreman in cut area. Working with/between three 30+ yard scrapers, D9 push dozer and D8 ripper dozer. All the operators on that job were extremely careful.

Still there was never a moment when you could relax around the equipment. When equipment like that breaks the results are often serious injury.