Those of you who frequent this list will know that I was moaning about a new French crane that had to go through long winded initialisation procedures before it could be used. The story just got more interesting today. The machine is a prototype and is on loan from the French manufacturer as a goodwill gesture after a brand new all terrain crane from the same company had an incident.
Apparently it was set up and the boom telescoped out when it suddenly let go and the boom explosively telescoped back into itself. Fortunately nobody was injured in the incident, but the crane suffered boom damage.
It was making me think.... What if the boom collapsed right now? Many times it would have taken the load and probably me and my bucket down with it. One of those "it could happen" things.