[Carruthers]

Here in the UK in 1997, the unsecured back hoe of a digger being transported as pictured above, swung out and hit a car killing five people in the process.

I remember the accident quite well, but surprised that it was nineteen years ago.

The driver of a low-loader lorry which killed five people has been ordered by court to receive treatment in a psychiatric hospital.

Mark Wade, appeared for sentence at Truro Crown Court after his conviction last month of causing the death of five people by dangerous driving.

Mr Wade was driving a lorry that was carrying a digger. The arm of the digger was not properly secured and swung out hitting the cars behind it.

Judge Graham Cottle said he was satisfied Wade was suffering from a mental illness linked to post traumatic stress disorder and depression.

The judge said two psychiatric reports revealed Wade had been very seriously and deeply affected adding: "You are a decent and hard-working family man who would never deliberately cause harm to another human being."

He said it was very significant that Wade, of Fraddon, west Cornwall, would be haunted by the memory of these events.

The accident happened at 6.30pm on a minor road at Castle-an-Dinas, west Cornwall, on December 15 1995 when Wade was driving the vehicle back to his St Columb depot having started work at 2.58am.

The digger arm swung out into the path of oncoming cars and there was an "explosion of glass and metal" with the roofs of vehicles "peeled open", the prosecution said during the trial. Last month the companies which employed Wade, Bazeley Plant Hire, from St Columb, and Chepstow Plant Hire, from Gwent, were ordered to pay a total of £500,000 in fines and costs after conviction for not ensuring the vehicle was not a risk to safety.

During the trial the Crown said the digger arm on the low loader should have been restrained with a metal pin and chained down but it was not.

Wade had told the jury he had received no instruction from any employer about loading in ten years of work.

He knew nothing about the metal pins used to secure digger arms, nor had it been his practice to chain the bucket arm.

There was a spare chain on the lorry but Wade said he had not used it to secure the digger because: "I thought it was safe".

The judge said he was satisfied in the absence of any training or supervision from either of the other defendants, Wade loaded the excavator in exactly the same way he always loaded excavators.

"You knew no different way. You had been taught no different way. You picked up the job as you went along, in the process learning bad habits. It seems from the evidence you were by no means alone in that," said the judge.

"Had you been properly instructed you would have followed those instructions. So it is the failures of others which are largely to blame for what happened.

BBC Archived article.