By MIKA OMURA/ Staff Writer
January 28, 2024 at 07:30 JST
This image shows how a user can be crushed under a snowplow. (Provided by the National Institute of Technology and Evaluation)
Accidents involving snowplows killed 13 people in Japan over a three-year period, figures show.
The finding was released by the National Institute of Technology and Evaluation (NITE) on Dec. 22.
“Given the huge snowfalls already seen in some areas this winter, we recommend that users stick to precautions, such as not deactivating safety functions and not leaving engines running,” said a NITE representative, alerting the public to the dangers.
The number of fatalities suggests that people are increasingly relying on mechanical snow removers.
Heavy moist snowfalls have featured more often in recent years due to global warming. Elderly people have a hard time removing snow manually.
The NITE said accidents from the use of commercial snowplows left 25 people dead and 13 injured during the period from fiscal 2013 through fiscal 2022.
It said 21 of the accidents, or more than half of all the cases, occurred during the three-year period that started from fiscal 2020. A surge in the death toll was also apparent during that time: a total of 13 people were killed.
Most of the fatal accidents were due to users being crushed under snowplows. There were 15 such occasions during the 10-year period. In six instances, victims were caught up in machine parts, logging the second largest number of deaths.
Eighty percent of the fatalities were due to misuse or carelessness.
On many occasions, victims deactivated or ignored safety features, such as one to automatically suspend a snowplow’s operations when users remove their hands from the steering handles.
In one such incident in Hiroshima Prefecture in January 2021, a man in his 80s attached a large clothes peg to a machine’s security device with the aim of rendering it inoperable.
Steering the snowplow manually, he reversed and stumbled. Although he released his hands from the handle, the machine did not stop. The man was crushed to death.
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