The Traffic Accident Reconstruction Origin -ARnews-

Need Opinion On Construction Vehicle Accident

Jennifer Marek ([email protected])
Fri, 12 Feb 1999 22:59:41 -0500 (EST)

I am a Sergeant in charge of the Accident Investigation Unit of my police department in Alexandria, Virginia. We are working the following case:

A construction site is working adjacent to a three-lane one-way street. The lane closest to the driveways leading in and out of the site is closed with cones and a large dumpster. A dump truck is parked behind the dumpster.

A backhoe pulls out of the site and into the street and dumps its load into the truck. It then turns west in the closed lane and moves up the street to pull back into the site at another driveway about 40 feet away. A construction worker who is attempting to cross the street to get lunch is struck by a wheel of the backhoe and killed.

Is this an industrial accident - to be investigated by OSHA and the Code Enforcement division - or is this a traffic accident - to be counted as a pedestrian traffic fatality and handled by my team? Just to make things interesting, the driver of the backhoe has a revoked driver's license and has been declared by the courts as a habitual offender.

Since the backhoe was actively working the construction site, is it a motor vehicle or not?

Thanks for any input - my team members and I are stumped! We don't want to have the city take a statistic for a traffic fatality if it is not necessary. We also certainly don't want to charge the backhoe operator with a traffic offense if we are not justified in doing so.

Thanks,

Sergeant Jennifer Marek
Alexandria Police Department
Jennifer Marek
[email protected]

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