Reversing vehicle accident: £28,000 fine after a yard worker was crushed by a recovery truck

“This accident took away my freedom.” Simon Pedder was doing yard duties at a vehicle recovery business in Highworth on 13 June 2025 when he was crushed under one of its own trucks in a reversing vehicle accident.

Bristol Magistrates’ Court fined Cotswold Vehicle Recovery (Swindon) Limited £28,000 on 29 October 2026 and ordered it to pay £2,000 in costs, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) announced the same day. The duty behind it isn’t new, and it falls on whoever is running the business: where people on foot work among moving vehicles, routes must keep them apart.

HSE found no suitable traffic management system to let vehicles and people on foot move safely, and no proper precautions to help reversing drivers. Where a forklift unloads in the same yard, its lifting operation plan is a separate question. A reversing camera that records raises the same questions as a dashcam in a work van.

The business pleaded guilty to breaching section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. Pedder broke both legs and an arm, punctured a lung and fractured a rib, and spent five weeks in the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, having operations to rebuild his legs that included skin grafts. More than 10 months on, HSE says, he hadn’t been able to return to work, and he’s been told he’ll most likely need walking aids for the rest of his life. HSE’s inspector, Laura Artosi, put the wider risk in one figure: “Almost 25 per cent of fatal workplace transport accidents in Great Britain occur while a vehicle is reversing.” The announcement gives no period for that figure. HSE brought the prosecution; the court set the fine.

Your yard is safest when no reversing vehicle is needed

HSE’s Safe manoeuvring guidance says the need for reversing should be eliminated wherever possible, and the prosecution announcement points to a one-way system for vehicles as the way to do it. Where that isn’t possible, it wants the site laid out with protective barriers, clear markings and pedestrian crossing points.

In a builders’ yard the people on foot are often carrying something, and watching the load in their arms rather than the truck.

Cameras and alarms help, but HSE sets limits on both

The announcement says rear-view cameras and warning alarms should be fitted, though it doesn’t say whether this truck had either. The guidance is less absolute. A camera can cover most blind spots, but the driver should be trained to use it and not grow complacent. An alarm may suit your site depending on your risk assessment, and works best alongside warning lights. On a noisy site it gets drowned out, and where alarms sound all day, people stop taking any notice.

So the first question for your yard isn’t which kit to fit. It’s whether anything there has to reverse at all, and where your people are walking when it does.