It isn't just novices who screw up. In the short six years I worked as an excavator I saw my share of screw-ups, thankfully none of which were mine. None of the screw-ups on my job sites involved serious injury, but there was a fatality on a big job near where we were working. The other company was digging a sewer trunk line with a big Koehring 1066 excavator. The operator backed up right over the foreman. That was before back-up alarms. I had previously worked for that company but didn't know the people involved.
