The Crushing Blow: Hydraulic Lift and Skid Steer Loader Accidents

Monday, October 26th, 2009

The Law Offices of Brian D. Witzer are now accepting clients who have been injured in hydraulic lift and skid steer loader accidents. Hydraulic machinery is commonly used at construction sites, factories, retail “big box” warehouse stores, storage warehouses, ranches, farms, and industrial work sites. Hydraulic lifts and skid steer loaders are popular “every day use” machines, used to move heavy materials in the buckets or other attachments fixed to the machines’ lift arms. The Bobcat brand of skid steer loader, for example, has been used around the United States for decades, and almost everyone has seen hydraulic fork lifts used at big box stores to lift pallets of groceries to and from the higher shelves.

Accidents can happen at any work site, but certain kinds of accidents can be more common than others. Bobcats and other brands of skid steer loaders have been known for years to injure, or even kill, their drivers or other people working near the machines. Bobcat injuries and deaths are frequently caused by something triggering the lift arms to rise or fall too quickly. The driver might accidentally hit one of the pedals controlling the lift arms (or those pedals can malfunction), the hydraulics powering the lift arms might stop working, or safety mechanisms built around the driver’s seat (that should automatically disable the lift arms from moving) fail for a variety of reasons.

The risk of these accidents can be surprisingly easy to overlook. When the Bobcat’s lift arms are lowered on the ground, the machine looks fairly safe. But when the lift arms are raised, it’s easy to forget that the lift arms are, despite the appearance of safety, lifting several hundred pounds of solid metal above the driver’s head, and above the heads of people near the machine. When the lift arms accidentally fall, they typically move too fast for the accident victim to get out of the way, then trap the victim between their massive weight and the operator’s cage or the front of the machine. The heavy weight of the lift arms pressing on the victim’s body, combined with rapid movement of that solid metal weight, are enough to cause severe crushing injuries, and frequently death.

Bobcat accidents also happen when the machine loses its balance and tips over, which can throw the driver out of the operator’s cage, or crush other people near the machine. Maintenance and repair work on Bobcats and other skid steer loaders can be exceptionally dangerous, too: if the hydraulics have to be disengaged to work on the machine, those heavy arms have to be very well-secured from falling. But not all models of skid steer loaders are built to adequately prevent the arms from falling during repairs without some kind of extra support. And even securing the arms to a pole or to stack of concrete blocks, for example, can create yet another situation where the machine looks safely under control, but is in reality ripe for a fatal accident.

If you have been injured by a Bobcat accident, or if you know someone who has been injured or killed by a skid steer loader accident, please contact Mr. Witzer’s office for a free, confidential evaluation.