February 22,2010: A BC company is helping ensure accidents like the one that closed a Manitoba mine recently never happen again.
Precision
Endgate Safety has been awarded the contract to supply
Smook Contractors with its Elevation Indicator System, an alarm system that warns drivers when their truck box has risen unexpectedly.
Smook Contractors contacted Precision
after an accident last month at Vale
Inco's Manitoba Operations, where a dump truck with a raised box slammed into a trestle carrying the
mine's tailings including both gas and water. Damage was substantial and closed surface operations for five days.
Truckshop Supervisor Dave
Naylor said the driver was unaware the box was going up
slowly as he drove. He said precision's alarm system will prevent similar incidents from
taking place in the future.
"We showed it to
Inco the other day and they were quite happy with the
alarm system, very happy
actually. We are putting it on all the trucks we own,"
Naylor said.
Precision
Endgate president Mark
Deverson says the incident that
occurred at
Inco is far from unique. Just
recently in Turkey, a truck travelling with its box raised obliterated a
pedestrian overpass and caused injury to a least one
pedestrian crossing the
footbridge at that time. The preventable accident is among the many that occur each year.
"No dump truck should be without this crucial piece of safety
equipment,"
Deverson says.
Naylor agrees. "We
should have done this a long time ago."
Precision's Elevation Indicator System is
potentially life-saving technology that provides a visual and audible warning to drivers unaware the bed of their dump truck, tilt box garbage truck, or lifting flat deck has risen to a
potentially deadly position. Precision also manufactures the
Endgate Locking System that prevents the tailgate of a dump box from opening while the truck or trailer is in transport to prevent cargo from escaping. The company is
headquartered in Grand Forks, BC.
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