Tyre manufacturer rapped after employee's arm crushed in machinery

Tyre manufacturer Pirelli has been fined £20k after one of its employees got his arm trapped in a tyre-testing machine.

The incident happened at the firm’s Dalston Road plant in Carlisle in January 2012 and Pirelli was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) after an investigation found safety procedures for carrying out maintenance were lacking.

Carlisle Magistrates’ Court heard the worker was trying to fix a fault on the machine, which lubricates, inflates and then measures tyres, which occurred when it was switched back on following the Christmas shutdown.

He switched it to manual mode and removed one of the guards to repair the fault in the lubricating part of the machine. The employee then returned the machine to automatic mode and it processed two tyres successfully before becoming struck again.

Without thinking, he reached back into the machine which then began operating, trapping his arm.

The HSE investigation found that the fault had occurred several times in the past after the machine was restarted following previous Christmas shutdowns, but Pirelli had failed to carry out a specific risk assessment for this maintenance work.

Speaking after the hearing, HSE Inspector Michael Griffiths said: “A moment’s lapse in concentration left an employee with major injuries to his left arm because Pirelli’s management of the risks from maintenance work wasn’t good enough.

“The fault with the machine had occurred before, following previous Christmas breaks, but the company didn’t have a specific risk assessment in place to make sure it could be fixed safely.

“Although Pirelli did have written Safe Working Procedures, they were not effective because the employees were either unaware of them or weren’t following them, and no effort was made to check that the procedures were being followed.

“This incident could have been avoided if Pirelli had done more to make sure that risks were being properly assessed and its employees were following safe working practices.”

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