Bulldozer drivers--what can you see from the driver's seat? (Rachel Corrie)

Factual Questions
1

Please, no debates as to whether Rachel Corrie was right or wrong. Link to news story.

My question is, how much can a bulldozer driver see from the driver’s seat? I’ve never driven one myself. Is it possible he simply didn’t see her? Accounts differ as to whether she was lying down in front of it, or sitting down in front of it, or on a pile or dirt in front of it, or had rolled behind the pile of dirt in front of it. Either way, would you have been able to see her?

There are some photos of it here.

Now, that top one, labeled “Rachel Corrie confronts the bulldozer driver”, looks to me like the scoop (?) is in the way. And the middle one, labeled, “A clearly marked Rachel Corrie, holding a megaphone”, which is the same one CNN.com is featuring in the link above–well, I look at it and I wonder, “Now, can he see her where she’s standing, even with the scoop down?”

So, how much can you see? Especially of what’s right in front of you, next to the scoop. The bulldozer bearing down on the Tiananmen Square guy had plenty of distance between them at first, so it was obvious that the scoop wouldn’t have been in the way. But it is possible to have something right in front of you, where you can’t see it?

And yes, I’m trying to give the driver the benefit of the doubt. I don’t have any particular pro-Israel bias, but I find it hard to believe that a human being could deliberately crush another human being under his bulldozer–and yes, spare me the stories about “the inhumanity of man to man”, I’ve heard them. I guess I don’t feel comfortable lumping Joe Blow the Dozer Driver in with Pol Pot and Goebbels.

So I wanna know if there’s any way he could just have not seen her.

2

Wasn’t it a tank, not a bulldozer? (or am I thinking of a different story?).

If she could see the driver’s face, then he could see her (if he was looking); it really does look like he did it on purpose though.

3

Ok, so there are ‘before’ and after photos, but why wasn’t the photographer taking any photos while it was happening? That way there would be absolute proof of what happened. Fair enough the photographer was probably horrified and wouldn’t even be thinking to take photos, but it would certainly have made things more clearcut.

4

Perhaps the photos were deemed not suitable for publication (although one of the ‘after’ ones is disturbingly graphic).

5

Surely they would have said if that was the case…and I agree, that one ‘after’ photo is awful…she does look crushed.

6

Okay, yeah, brain fart, Tiananmen was a tank.

Any 'dozer drivers out there?

No clue where any other photos are–the ones that CNN.com is using are the ones provided by the ISM.

7

www.cat.com

You can look at some of their product offerings, specifications, etc.

8

I’ve driven Dozers, Track Hoes, and numerous back hoes. The dozer was reasonably easy to see out of. It was only a D-4 (20,000lbs) and I think the ones I’ve seen on the news were more like D-9s. Also, they where heavily armored, and did look hard to see out of.

Reguardless, I don’t think you should be operating heavy equipment without a very clear picture of your surroundings. If you have to get out to look, thats what you do.

Of course, the driver in this dozer would probably risk attack if he got out, so it’s a tough call all around.

9

You’d think common sense would prevail. If she couldn’t see a face, she shouldn’t have been sitting (laying?) down.

Having only driven trucks (but not tractor-trailers) it can be difficult to see down in front of the hood. Many school busses have swinging gates that prevent kids from walking in front of the bus. Since a bulldozer’s view is probably worse than a school bus, I’d suspect it was an accident. Was the driver a soldier? If not I’d think most normal people wouldn’t want to run over another human on purpose.

10

A D-4? Yes, you could have seen her if she were standing up. The blade is shorter than a person.

I bet he thought she would move.

11

The D-4 is what I have used. And yes the blade is probably no more than 4’ high.

I believe the Dozer in question was much bigger.

Interior shot of a D-9R -

http://www.cat.com/cgi-bin/equipment_proddetail_overview.cgi?type=features&subfamilyid=322&subfamily=Large&family=Track-Type+Tractors&headerimageid=C015445&rgnid=NACD&model=D9R&id=D9R&feature=Operator+Station@featurepulldowndelim@19445

12

Was the blade raised up at the time?

13

I’ve run many different pieces of heavy equipment, including cats from D4 to D11. It’s hard to say for sure but this appears to be a D7 (or equivalent). The blade is probably 12-15 feet wide and about 5 feet high. The operator would easily be able to see people standing in front of the blade at any distance on level ground. However, the large photo in the second link makes it look like the ground slopes down toward the house. If so, it would be much more difficult to see the people standing there. And if this

is correct I would think that the operator the woman ducked down out of sight and ran to safety.
Also, if there is a hill as there appears to be, an operator would attempt to fill in the the slight drop-off to create a level path. If the woman fell right at the edge of this, she would be covered by dirt instead of being pushed along with it (not that being pushed along with the dirt would have been any better).
So, I don’t think the operator deliberately ran over her, but he did show incredibly poor judgement in continuing his push when he lost sight of her.

14

Correction

15

One other possibility, from personal experience: big Cats can slide and slip on the loose soil. The driver might have intended to “miss her by inches” and missed. (Negligence…) Or he might have intended to miss her by a safe margin, and missed. Or she might have slipped in the loose dirt.

People die in construction (and demolition) accidents all the time, even in the most rigidly controlled building sites.

(And if he’d intended to kill her, her body would probably have been much more mangled.)

Trinopus

16

My younger brother’s friend got crushed to death by a bulldozer a few years ago. This one was driving backwards and didn’t see him because of that.

They’re big machines. Certainly possible to drive over something before realizing it. Of course, I don’t know in this particular case.

17

I would imagine he probably did see her and he thought she would eventually get out of the way if he got menacing enough. He was probably under a lot of stress and subject to being fired on, so the bulldozer driver’s attentions were probably not focused on her welfare as he tried to get on with his job. They were both playing chicken and she lost.
With respect to her state of mind who can say, but it is evident (to me) that upper class white American kids (and women particularly) are used to being deferred to. I’m sure her convictions were keenly felt, but I would also wager that the notion that someone would actually, deliberately run her over if she refused to move was probably not even in her universe, even if death and destruction were going on around her.

18

Its possible he didn’t see her. Its possible he didn’t care. Its possible this child thought she could stop a bulldozer with her body. However, it would have been impossible for that to actually happen.

Fagjunk Theology: Not just for sodomite propagandists anymore.

19

In retrospect it occurs to me that I have not addressed the OP’s question about how the event occurred other than with a conjecture about how events unfolded, and in addition made a guess as to how and why she would put herself into harms way.

I apologize to the members of this forum for straying from the topic at hand.

20

Actually, as it happens I know someone who has just seen Bulldozer 94, the one that killed Rachel Corrie (he attended a memorial at the place where she was killed and the IDF, who the mourners phoned in advance to say they would be there, rather disgracefully sent along Bulldozere 94). He told me that the bulldozer did have good visibilty (it in fact proved this by driving towards the mourners and swerving at the last second several times in an attempt to intimidate them).

Also, to everyone: keep the answers factual theres a thread in great debates, where your free to speculate.