I was eating lunch when the call came in of an unkown "problem" at a gravel pit. Once in the pit, I spotted several heavy hauler trucks and their drivers - who all were pointing to a distant location where a front-end loader sat unattended. I knew this was not going to be good. None of the drivers wanted to be near the site of the "problem".
Once by the loader, I knew why. The dead body and the round wet spot on one of the enormous tires told part of the story. The man's head had been totally crushed by the machine, and his brains were strewed on the ground.
Upon locating the loader operator, he told me that the deceased truck driver had jumped onto the loader in order to indicate what type of gravel he wanted to transport. As bad luck would have it, a tree started to fall in their direction from the top of the embankment.
The loader operator quickly swerved his machine to try to protect the truck driver from harm. It failed. The truck driver, who was clinging to the side of the machine, fell off. The huge tire ran over his head, resulting in immediate death.
The decision of the truck driver to mount the front end loader - the falling tree - and the failed manuever to avoid injury resulted in the unfortunate death of one man and the lasting horror experienced by the other. A person's life can be altered - or even end - very quickly.
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