United States Marine dies after training incident near Darwin

Sad...Whats the difference between accident and incident?

United States marine dies after training incident near Darwin

This reminds me of my time in Defence...We had a number of fatalities from roll overs...Old Land Rovers mostly.

 

Operator error?

 

The difference is editor's choice in creating the headline. If you read the article, the reporter does call it an accident.

 

An incident is an event or occurrence, it can be accidental or intentional.

 

The news reporting here no longer reports about car "accidents". They report about car "crashes" as they are all caused by operator error. An accident is a wheel falling off.

3 in crashes in 6 weeks. I am reminded of the lessons taught in 1942 ski commando training films where the point was made that skiining safely was more important than skiing fast. Injured commandos are a time waster that impacts the mission.

Marine Killed in Australia Humvee Accident; 3rd Rollover Death in 6 Weeks

 

Humvees are so low...such a low centre of gravity...must be difficult to roll it? No doubt speed was a factor.

 

They have built simulators to train for it.

 

I say the following with the usual caveat of playing armchair quarterback:

The standard Humvee has an extremely low center of gravity. In 15+ years of driving Humvees and the civilian H1 derivatives on road and off road in a wide variety of terrain I've never come close to rolling one. To roll it, you'd need to be at an excessive sideways angle (as an estimate, 40+ degrees to port/starboard) or be driving far too fast in a turn. The fact that the article states "departed the road and rolled over" implies to me that the vehicle was going too fast and due to driver error skidded off the road, which led to a rollover.

I have no experience with up-armored Humvees. However, slap an up-armored turret onto it and you'd increase the roll probability significantly.

 

I saw a pair of Humvees with mortars in tow parked at the supermarket this morning with a few of the men standing by them. The top was down on my Jeep so I drove over and said "A riddle for you men. How do you get a Humvee to roll over?" When they couldn't come up with any answer I told them "Put a Marine behind the wheel".

Then I told them some stories of Army Infantry Ranger WWII history and about 1st Ranger Shunstrom forming the mortar company.

 

Humvee rollovers are fairly common, as are rollovers of many other tactical vehicles. I can't find a current military wide total for the Humvee, but the US Army alone had 819 rollover accidents with the vehicle from October 1991 through May 2013 (six year old data).
One of the Marines that deployed to Iraq with my older son actually rolled a 7-ton and an up armored Humvee during their deployment. He was a Lance Cooley at the time and is now a Captain in 1st Tank Battalion. The 7-ton was due to driving at night using NVG's, an IED explosion caused his NOG's to whiteout and he left the road. Try driving at night, down a road filled with craters and debris, doing 40 mph with other vehicles ahead of and behind you, then suddenly shut your eyes for 30-45 seconds. That's what it's like when your NOG's white out, can't see a thing, totally blind, how do you stay oriented, how do you react?
I don't know the circumstances with the Humvee, two Marines were injured and it was determined that the accident was unavoidable. So, don't assume it was driver error, it could have been, but it's just as likely it could have been the tactical situation he was being required to operate in. Such as driving at night with NVG's, you have no depth perception and a greatly reduced field of vision, that shadow to the side of the road could be a berm or a six foot deep ditch.

So far this year the following tactical vehicle rollovers resulting in death have occurred:

28 May-US Marine, Darwin Australia, 1 dead, 1 injured-https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/05/28/marine-killed-australia-humvee-accident-3rd-rollover-death-6-weeks.html
15 May-US Army, Ft. Polk, 1 dead, 12 injured-https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/05/16/one-soldier-killed-12-injured-in-humvee-rollover-at-fort-polk/
9 May-US Marine, Camp Pendleton, 1 dead, 6 injured, LAV rollover-https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/05/09/1-marine-dead-6-hurt-camp-pendleton-vehicle-rollover.html
13 April-US Marine, Camp Pendleton, 1 fatally injured (died next day), 2 injured, Polaris MRZR rollover-https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/04/16/marine-raider-killed-vehicle-accident-was-29-year-old-father.html
14 January-US Army, Ft. Irwin, 1 dead, 3 injured, M2 Bradley IFV-https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/01/15/1st-cav-soldiers-die-duty-vehicle-incidents-3-days-apart.html