Full article here in the Manchester Evening News.
R.I.P Tragic way to die 
Heard about this earlier…
I was in Altrincham today too until around 1pm - phew…
That boy is in a lot of trouble now, for whatever reason it wasn’t secured, he’s going to pay a mighty price…
Awful. Sympathies for the woman involved, her family and friends.
Surely it wouldn’t be difficult to fit sensors to these legs, making it impossible to move the vehicle unless they are properly secured?
Does a buzzer sound or a light come on if they’re not fully retracted? Our JCB beeps at you if the legs aren’t right up.
Shame that jusy go’s to show check and double check because this is ehat can happen was at a builders merchants the other day guy I was talking to told me about one of their drivers left the yard with his crane still up took out a load of power cables then hit a bridge and still kept his job human error it happens just unfortunately someone was killed this time rip.
RIP nasty way to go
Driving through Bristol last Friday P+H rigid pulled out in front of me with his tail lift still out he had shut the back door but the tail lift was level with the floor,he turned left before I could stop him I got stuck at the lights but wasn’t much room when he turned left.
Older hiab with just one locking pin to secure manual legs by the looks of it.
Sad loss.
Its a sobering story. As mentioned earlier in this thread regarding the tail lift down-that also could kill a pedestrian.
Quite scary how one lapse in concentration can have awful results.
reminds me of this one BBC News | UK | Sentence for lorry driver who killed five, that happened down the road from where I live, similar thing, locking pin left out of a diggers swing arm and takes out 5 people in a car in the opposite lane. At least that time the driver was proven not to have been trained properly and didn’t know about locking pins and was just carrying out standard (bad) practice for his firm. It goes to show no matter how confident you are that nothing serious will come of your driving, even the smallest of things can screw up other peoples lives.
William Stewart, an agency driver working for Block n Mesh Fencing of Birkenhead, has been found guilty of killing Natalie Thorpe by dangerous driving.
Full article here in the Manchester Evening News.
Harry Monk:
Awful. Sympathies for the woman involved, her family and friends.Surely it wouldn’t be difficult to fit sensors to these legs, making it impossible to move the vehicle unless they are properly secured?
All modern cranes are fitted with sensors that means if the crane is not properly stowed or the legs are not properly home then an alarm sounds in the cab.This crane looks like an older atlas crane which will not have any alarms.
The only thing holding the legs in on this type of crane will be a lock pin, which means if the driver forgets to lock the leg when he’s finished his lift then the first corner he comes to the leg is coming straight back out.
The only other thing that could happen is some ■■■■■■ releasing the locking pin while the the truck is parked unknown to the driver, a bit like someone pulling the the pin on an artic, one reason you should always have a quick walk round after being a way from the truck.
Exactly alfaman, my crane has alarms in the cab that sound if the legs or crane is not stowed and locked, but this only came into force around 2010 or thereabouts, not exactly sure, but all cranes should have been made to retrofit these alarms, they are not difficult or expensive to do, any operator with a half decent worksop or mechanic could do it easily, ffs, I could probably do it myself, it’s not that difficult.
Sapper
It clearly states in this article that there was a warning buzzer sounding but he chose to ignore it 
Taken from the article:
‘He had failed to secure the stabiliser in place and ignored a warning alarm which could clearly be heard by pedestrians on the street.’
The report says pedestrians could hear a warning buzzer going off, also saying it was an agency driver.
Has anybody considered he might have left the leg out there on purpose??..
TheMealDeal:
Has anybody considered he might have left the leg out there on purpose??..
To serve what purpose? I think it’s highly improbable to the point of why the [zb] would you even think it?
So no, other than you, I don’t think anyone has or would consider it tbh.
Years ago I once drove a HIAB with the old fashioned manual pull out stabilizers like this one. The thing was a poorly maintained bag of shiet. The locking mechanism was simply a latch that you flicked over to lock. Well one day I was coming off a large roundabout when I saw the N/S leg come flying out!!! I slammed on the anchors and was ■■■■■■■■ myself thinking how I could have killed somebody.
It turned out that the locking latch was badly worn and didn’t always lock properly. I drove it back to yard and never worked for that shower of shiet again!
I was just very lucky and it could have easily been me in the above situation looking at jail time!!
TheMealDeal:
Has anybody considered he might have left the leg out there on purpose??..
Pretty stupid first post. Are you a burger flipper instead of a truck driver by any chance?
Update:
Driver jailed for 4 years. dailymail.co.uk/news/article … years.html
Especially like the “driver was using his mobile phone as a satnav” very poignant and relative to the case in hand, [zb]ing DM hacks! 
Oh and that loading / strapping was also atrocious
