Insufficient safety rules caused the death of packer Zohaib Aamir, 16, hit by a snowplow while he was picking up grocery baskets at the IGA Extra in Galeries Laval, concludes the investigation by the Standards Commission, equity, health and safety at work (CNESST).
“The employer, the parking manager and the specialized subcontractor have not established safety rules to prevent collisions between self-propelled snow removal vehicles and workers,” underlines the CNESST in its report released Tuesday, one year after the event.
“I don’t understand how the driver didn’t see him,” the victim’s mother told The Press.
The driver could not see the teenager, shows the reconstruction carried out with a mannequin.
It was nearly 9:15 p.m. when the packer found himself in the backing area of a snow loader. He was wearing a fluorescent orange jacket, but in the rearview camera and the side mirrors used by the driver, “the mannequin is not visible,” noted the CNESST.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY CNESST
Hit in the pelvis by the bumper of the nearly 16-ton vehicle, the young worker fell to the ground where he was “fatally crushed”. His death was pronounced by the police at 9:30 p.m.
The external examination carried out the next day at the Montreal morgue noted “a depression of the skull and fractures of the pelvis”, mentions the coroner, Me Steve Poisson, in a separate report.
Poor traffic management
“Even if the machine is equipped with mirrors and cameras,” you should always check that there are “no people and no obstacles around,” says the loader manufacturer’s manual. But dangerous reversing maneuvers were not included in the training document used by the driver’s employer, Les Serres Sylvain Cléroux, the CNESST discovered.
“Managing the movement of workers” is also in question.
IGA Extra had “no specific safety rules established to prevent collisions”. He did not require his workers to have eye contact with drivers at all times, nor to ever approach their work area.
As for the parking manager, Marcel Blouin real estate, he authorized “snow loading work during opening hours”.
In the months following the accident, the snow removal subcontractor provided a safe work procedure, IGA Extra amended its basket collection procedure, and the shopping center manager sent a prevention program with a snow removal section.
Of 60 fatal work accidents recorded in 2021, only two victims were under 25 years old. This working group, however, presents lesions “up 12.5% since 2016 [et] young people under 20 are particularly affected (+27.0% since 2016),” underlines the CNESST in its latest Injury portrait of young workers aged 24 or under.
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