Error parsing XSLT file: \xslt\FacebookOpenGraph.xslt Kent council fined £70,000 after motorbike collided with road sweeper
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Kent council fined £70,000 after motorbike collided with road sweeper

Date: 21 January 2016   |   Author: Daniel Puddicombe

Sevenoaks District Council has been fined £40,000 after a biker was killed after colliding with a road sweeper in December 2010.

The council road sweeper lorry was cleaning the outside lane of a slip road when Derek McCulloch drove into the back of it on his motorcycle.

Maidstone Crown Court found that the road sweeper had been travelling at 4mph around a bend in the road, preventing the motorcyclist from seeing the vehicle.

Despite the road sweeper having flashing beacons and a large arrow indicating for vehicles to pass by on the back, the court said there should have been more controls in place for sweeping sections of a higher-speed road like this.

A Health and Safety Executive investigation found that Sevenoaks had no road specific risk assessment in place, just a generic one covering all council road sweeping.

Sevenoaks' risk assessment did not identify all suitable control measures needed for sweeping this dual-lane slip road, according to the HSE, and the Kent district council was subsequently fined £50,000 and ordered to pay costs of £30,000 after pleading guilty to breaching sections 2(1) and 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act.

Meanwhile, a construction company - Globalreward - was fined £10,000 and a company director received a two month suspended prison sentence after an employee was crushed by a road roller in 2012.

Swindon Crown Court heard how Andrew Poole, employed by Globalreward Limited of Chippenham, was killed after his head was crushed by the ride-on road roller that he had been operating.

Poole was sat in the drivers' seat, reversing the machine, when the seat detached from the machine, causing him to fall beneath it as it reversed.

An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive found that the road roller was in poor condition and the operator was untrained.



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