£30,000 fine after worker struck by robot
AN AUTOMOTIVE firm has been fined £30,000 after an employee was left almost paralysed when he was struck by a robot.
Dura Automotive Body and Glass Systems UK, based in the Castle Bromwich area of Birmingham, was also ordered to pay £20,000 costs by the city’s crown court following the prosecution by the Health and Safety Executive.
Michael Brewer’s voice box was damaged and he was left almost paralysed down one side of his body after he was struck while repairing a fully automated industrial robot in May 2008.
Mr Brewer wanted to see the operating cycle of the machine but a solid guard enclosed the robot impeding his view, the HSE said.
He decided to view the robot from inside the guarded area while it was operating, which is when it struck him in the throat, causing the damage to his voice box and nerves on one side of his body.
The HSE said its investigation found the company had a system of work for accessing the machine that required it to be put in manual before entering, rather than on the full automatic cycle.
The Executive said it discovered this process was not supervised, failed to account for the need to view the operating cycle from outside and the practice of stepping inside the guard had become common.
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HSE inspector Edward Fryer added: “There was a culture of violation in this factory and it is vey sad that it took an almost fatal accident for the company to identify this.
“Keeping the robot on the automatic cycle in these circumstances could very well have resulted in automatic death.”
Dura Automotive pleaded guilty to breaching both the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.
Since the incident took place, the company has installed large viewing panels so the machine can be seen from outside the guarding, as well as improving the access arrangements and supervision of its systems. Mr Brewer will not return to work because of his injuries.
Dura Automotive’s finance director Geoff Adams said: “We believe we had a safe working practice but we pleaded guilty on the basis that employees were doing things we didn’t know about.
“We accept if an accident happens, by default we are to blame. We have a very safe factory and we think we run a safe business from an operational point of view.
“They (staff) seemed to have developed a way of by-passing our safety systems and risking injury, which is what happened and which we are very sorry about.”
