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Flying piece of lumber injures 3 at road construction site

On Behalf of | May 23, 2014 | Workplace Injuries

For people who work at inherently dangerous jobs in New Jersey, the risk of something bad happening is relatively constant. Construction workers, in particular — whether they are working on a building or paving a highway — face danger all the time, whether or not they think about it that way. Highway construction crews, especially, are vulnerable to suffering a serious workplace accident because their job site is often full of cars and trucks whizzing by at excessive speeds.

An accident that took place at a worksite in California recently is a good example of how a dangerous situation can crop up seemingly out of nowhere. A worker was carrying a 20-foot board along his construction site, alongside a concrete barrier that acted as the division with the active highway. He inadvertently swung the two-by-four over the barrier, just as a big rig was going by.

The timing was such that the truck, which was going approximately 30 mph, hit the board and knocked it out of the worker’s hands. Unfortunately, some other workers were in the path of the board, and three of the workers were hit by it.

As a result of their injuries, two of those workers were taken to the hospital. The driver of the tractor-trailer, meanwhile, did not stop when his vehicle hit the board. Officials speculate that he might not even have realized that he had made contact; the loud jackhammering and vibration from the work project meant that he might not have noticed anything was amiss.

Source: Merced Sun-Star, “Three Fix50 workers hurt in ‘unusual’ construction accident,” Tony Bizjak and Richard Chang, April 23, 2014

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