Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Bellanca, Ryan, and Orr performed the qualitative analysis with methodological support from Burgess-Limerick.
Bellanca primarily wrote the manuscript and created the figures, tables, and graphs with input from Ryan, Orr, and Burgess-Limerick. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript. Among these fatal accidents, haul-truck-related accidents are the most common, with 6 of 28 and 6 of 27 fatal accidents occurring in and , respectively. To better understand why these accidents continue to occur and what can be done to prevent them, researchers reviewed the 91 haul-truck-related fatal accidents that occurred in the USA from to and performed bow-tie analyses using the final reports published by the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
The analyses explore the context of the accidents with a focus on the initiating event, event outcome, hazards present, and possible preventative and mitigative controls. Overall, the vast majority of the accidents resulted in a haul truck colliding with the environment, and the majority of these events were initiated by loss of situational awareness or loss of control.
The majority of the hazards were related to design and organizational controls. The results of this study suggest a need to investigate operator decision-making and organizational controls and to focus on improving design and operation controls such as mine design and operational procedures.
Keywords: Administrative controls, Engineering controls, Haulage trucks, Qualitative analysis. Among powered haulage in mines, haul trucks are the most common piece of mobile equipment [ 2 ] and the most commonly related to fatal accidents. In fact, 6 out of 28 and 6 out of 27 mining fatal accidents that occurred in the USA in and , respectively, were related to haul trucks [ 3 ]. Despite years of effort to address haul truck health and safety issues, the question remainsβwhy do haul truck fatal accidents keep occurring?
