Court clears Israeli army over death of U.S. activist

[Big_Mike]

25. As I have stated over the years, my deepest condolences to her family. But she made mistakes.

I work around heavy construction equipment all of the time. She was run over by a 54-ton D9R bulldozer. As the bulldozer moves forward, the earth and materials are being scraped from the ground and pushed by the blade to fall forward, kind of in a circular motion. This material is called spoil. The mission of that dozer was to clear vegetation. In the famous photos taken before the event, you can see some small trees in the spoil.

At the time Rachel was run over, the dozer had spoil built up in front of the blade. She was reportedly climbing up the spoil with shoulders and head above the level of the blade for a moment or two, calling for the dozer to stop through a loudspeaker. She had apparently done this a couple of times before. Here is where the tragedy begins.

Firstly, climbing above the spoil, even in a reflective vest, she stood about a 50/50 chance of the driver even seeing her. You look to the sides and rear quite a bit when operating such a machine. One of the ISM members stated that the driver was looking over his shoulder as Rachel got to the top of the spoil. Also, the armored cab has very small windows with limited visibility.

Second, she was trying to make the driver hear over a 460 hp un-muffled diesel engine which is virtually impossible. It is very, very loud when the cab area is open, in the armored version like that, the drive might hear a bomb go off 100 yds away, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Finally, trying to move to get away once the subsurface begins to shatter due to the approach of the dozer is almost impossible. According to the report, her foot was caught and then the spoil went over her. This is, according to the report, what killed her. Not the blade and most definitely not the tracks.

A beautiful young lady died, a family was devastated, and no gain occurred anywhere. But I do have to say that this was preventable simply by standing 15 degrees off to the side of the machine as it came forward.