A coal firm was fined £400,000 today after the deaths of two employees crushed by a dumper truck.
A coal firm was fined £400,000 today after the deaths of two employees crushed by a dumper truck.
The Scottish Coal Company Ltd admitted safety breaches following the deaths of Colin Ferguson, 37, and Brian French, 48, at a mine in Dalmellington, East Ayrshire, last year.
The men were in a Land Rover which collided with a 100-tonne capacity truck at the Pennyvenie open cast mine on February 26 2007.
Today at Ayr Sheriff Court Sheriff, John Montgomery imposed a fine of £400,000.
The sheriff said the offence consisted of two failures - the lack of a safe system of movement for small vehicles working around bigger trucks, and a failure to provide staff with two-way radios for communication.
The court heard that staff regularly drove around the site in Land Rovers, entering live dig areas.
The dump trucks in use were fitted with mirrors, but it was known that there were blind spots following a previous accident.
Sheriff Montgomery said: "The accident occurred against a background of a strikingly similar accident at the same site on March 23 2005.
"Fortunately no one died or was injured in that accident.
"That, however, should have alerted the company of the need to put in place systems designed to reduce the risks of similar accidents occurring again.
"They failed to do so and that failure is in my view of considerable magnitude."
Around 140 men work at Pennyvenie, which has been open since 1986 and produces 750,000 tonnes of coal a year.
Mr Ferguson, of Prestwick, Ayrshire, and Mr French, of Kelloholm, Sanquhar, Dumfries and Galloway, were killed instantly in the collision.
Scottish Coal has 693 employees, with 563 employed in open-cast sites.
The firm pleaded guilty to breaches of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.
The court heard how the accident could have been prevented if the Land Rovers used on site were fitted with poles and flags at the rear to alert dump truck drivers.
Two-way radios for all vehicles would have been a simple and relatively inexpensive way of preventing the tragedy, the court was told.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) today warned about the dangers of poorly managed transport in the workplace.
HSE Inspector Norrie Buchanan said: "These two deaths were entirely preventable and arose from the clear failure of Scottish Coal to provide suitable means of communication between different vehicles on site in order to reduce the risk of collisions, as well as a failure to manage vehicles on their site.
"Earth-moving vehicles such as dump trucks or bulldozers have poor visual fields due to their large size.
"It is crucial that additional steps are taken to ensure that the drivers of these dump trucks are aware of other smaller vehicles around them."
The HSE said quarrying remained one of the most dangerous industries in the UK, with 21 workers killed and thousands injured since 2000.
