The accident analysis of mobile mine machinery in Indian opencast coal mines

Abstract

This paper presents the analysis of large mining machinery related accidents in Indian opencast coal mines. The trends of coal production, share of mining methods in production, machinery deployment in open cast mines, size and population of machinery, accidents due to machinery, types and causes of accidents have been analysed from the year 1995 to 2008. The scrutiny of accidents during this period reveals that most of the responsible factors are machine reversal, haul road design, human fault, operator's fault, machine fault, visibility and dump design. Considering the types of machines, namely, dumpers, excavators, dozers and loaders together the maximum number of fatal accidents has been caused by operator's faults and human faults jointly during the period from 1995 to 2008. The novel finding of this analysis is that large machines with state-of-the-art safety system did not reduce the fatal accidents in Indian opencast coal mines.

Keywords:

• accident analysis
• mobile mine machinery
• cause-and-effect
• fatal accidents

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank the Director of Directorate General of Mines Safety (DGMS), Dhanbad, for allowing us to use the accident data for the period from 1995 to 2008.