Victor Goudy, 58, a 30-year veteran of the mining industry, was pinned between a trip of empty dollies (lowboys) and the lead motor while working at Consol’s McElroy mine October 19. He was a rock dust motorman for the complex.

“After the dollies were uncoupled from the lead motor, the victim was removing the drawbar from one of the dollies when the trail motor travelled around a turn and struck the uncoupled dollies,” said the agency.

“The trail motor was not attached to the trip of dollies.”

In hopes of avoiding similar incidents in the future at other US operations, MSHA released a series of best practices, including:

Always be aware of your location in relation to mobile equipment;

Never place yourself between dollies/equipment unless each piece of equipment in the trip has come to a complete stop and has been secured against movement;

When the trail motor is not an integral part of the trip, ensure that the trail motor has stopped before any work begins;

Communicate to others the exact stopping location of any trip; and

Require the use of trip lights when a trail motor is not coupled to the trip.

The agency has encouraged industry suggestions for other remedies to prevent this type of accident going forward. When submitting suggestions, it asks for the year of the fatality as well as the number.

Goudy’s death was the 24th recorded during 2008 in US coal, and the ninth to be classified by MSHA under Powered Haulage this year.

McElroy, known as one of the nation’s largest underground operations, had not had a fatal operator injury since 2004 and reported an operator non fatal days lost (NFDL) rate of 2.55 last year, when it produced over 9.66 million tons of coal with 1.96 million operator hours worked.