Good points both. Yes, if you have one vehicle directly after another then a pit will not be exposed for very long. I’m not sure what I saw on the TV at the train workshop reflected that, but hard to tell from the snippet I watched.
Yes, it does show different standards adopted, and it may be that the logic of open edged platforms has been extended to their workshop. However, when I googled it I only came up with a few instances, but one of those is as below. Where in both instances with the same company it was employees who knew, the pit was there, that suffered. This was a few years ago before the fines increased, I suspect there would be more zeros now.
Bus company fined £60,000 after worker suffers spinal injuries in new cross garage incident
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has warned garage owners to ensure that workers are safe when working in or near vehicle inspection pits, following the HSE prosecution of the London Central Bus Company Limited. The prosecution followed an incident in which an employee fell into a pit and suffered spinal injuries, just over a year after another employee died in similar circumstances.
London Central Bus Company Limited was fined £60,000 and ordered to pay costs of £15,347 at The Central Criminal Courts (the Old Bailey), after the company pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act etc 1974. HSE Inspector Loraine Charles said: "This is an example of a company putting its employees in unnecessary danger by failing to control risks and take appropriate measures to create a safe working environment."
"On paper, London Central Bus Company had a reasonable system for controlling risks to their employees but they failed to properly implement it. They failed to focus on areas of danger and missed what the Judge, in this case, described as ‘blindingly obvious risks’. The company were aware, following the previous fatal incident, that risks arising from work around vehicle pits were significant and potentially fatal but failed to ensure that they had identified and addressed all tasks where such risks arose"
On 21 October 2005, Omar Maouche, a bus chassis cleaner at New Cross Bus Garage, New Cross, London, fell into a vehicle inspection pit as he attempted to use a partial pit cover as a bridge to cross from one side of the pit to the other. He suffered compression of the spine, which has severely affected his working life since.
London Central Bus Company was found to have failed on many levels to ensure the safety of its employees. It had failed to carry out and implement the findings of a risk assessment which identified the hazards in Mr Maouche’s work, nor did it provide a system of work for this job that was safe and without risks to health. It had also failed to take effective measures to prevent falls in the workplace. In addition, the company did not provide employees with information about risks and their prevention, nor give the necessary training and supervision to ensure employees’ health and safety.
The failings in this case were compounded by the fact that another of the company’s employees died after falling into a vehicle pit at the same garage in July 2004. Concerns about the adequacy of the company’s risk assessments, the covering or fencing of vehicle pits when not in use and their general system for the management of health and safety had been raised during the HSE’s investigation into the earlier accident, but London Central had failed to adequately address those concerns in the intervening 15 months.