Opinion ID: 2959684
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Richard Slone’s Jobsite Activities

Text: Draper Paving employed Richard Linwood Slone as a dump truck driver, and Slone was assigned to work the Route 419 project hauling loads of hot asphalt to the jobsite. Because of the logistics of the jobsite, Slone could not simply dump the asphalt from the truck into the open water-line channel. Instead, Slone would raise and lower the dump truck’s bed to pour asphalt into the bucket of a front-end loader. The front-end loader would then transfer the asphalt into the open water-line channel, and other Draper Paving employees would level the asphalt. Draper Paving did not originally intend to use a front-end loader in this process. Initially, the crew planned to use a piece of machinery called a “road widener,” but that machine malfunctioned. The switch from the road widener to the front-end loader had two consequences. First, because the dump truck’s bed was wider than the front-end loader’s bucket, hot asphalt would spill around the bucket’s sides when Slone lifted the dump truck’s bed to unload the asphalt. And because the crew was working at night in February, the spilled asphalt cooled quickly on the ground and hardened. To avoid leaving hardened piles of asphalt on the road, Slone would periodically exit the dump truck to check this spillage. If spillage needed to be picked up, Slone would pull the dump truck forward and other Draper Paving employees could scrape the spillage from the road. 2 Second, before the road widener malfunctioned, the project only required the closure of the right lane of Route 419. However, to use the front-end loader, the operator was required to back into the left lane of Route 419, so he could then turn the loader perpendicular to the dump truck and pull forward to dump the asphalt into the open water-line channel. Such use required periodic closures of the left lane. Draper Paving did not communicate to LMC Barricade the need to close the left lane, and LMC Barricade did not adjust the safety setup or traffic pattern to accommodate this change. Instead, a Draper Paving employee would use a stop/slow sign and stand in the center of Route 419 to flag motorists whenever the front-end loader needed to maneuver into the left lane.