Crush fine. A transport company has been fined ￡500,000 after an employee suffered multiple injuries when she was crushed between two lorries. The incident occurred at TIP Trailer Services' Griff Lane depot in Nuneaton on 9 April 2013 while an employee, Jennifer Rose, was helping a lorry driver to reverse park on a slope. The driver decoupled his trailer without engaging its parking brake, causing it to roll back and trap her between the two vehicles. She suffered severe head injuries, 13 broken bones, a punctured lung, a cardiac arrest and was in intensive care for 10 days. Although confined to a wheelchair for some months, she subsequently regained some mobility. The HSE's investigation found that TIP Trailer Services regularly allowed vehicles to park on a slope without the provision of chocks or similar devices; nor did it have a monitoring system to check whether drivers were applying their handbrakes properly. The slope ended on a public road, putting passing pedestrians and drivers at risk in addition to the site workers. On 16 March at Warwick Crown Court, TIP Europe, trading as TIP Trailer Services, was fined ￡500,000, with ￡56,938 costs, after it admitted failing to ensure its employees' safety and exposing non-employees to risks from its undertaking (s.2(1) and s.3(1) of the HSW Act). HSE inspector Elizabeth Horns-by said: "It was common practice for drivers to park on a slope within the compound, which should never have been allowed as it was inevitable that sooner or later a driver would fail to put on their handbrake."
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