Geez, you look at the size of that bulldozer, the bulletproof glass in the cab and then the cage surrounding the cab, it is a wonder the operator can see anything.
I operated D9s and D11s when I worked at the county dump. It's hard enough to see out of a civilian version.Can't recall exactly anymore, but I would say anything that's closer than around 30' in front of you is in one of your many blind spots.
I just ran those smaller dozers as part of the maintenance crew. The regular operators, that buried the trash, operated D13s. We had two fatalities with the D13s in the six years that I worked there. Once one of our guys, a spotter for telling the public and the trash trucks where to dump, and to, ironically, keep people out of the way of the dozers, saw something bright and shiny in a trash pile. He tried to beat the dozer to pull it out before it was buried. He lost. Witnesses said he saw the dozer at the last second and tried to get away, but appeared to trip in the refuse pile and fell. The dozer, while backing up, ran over his head. The other death was a trash truck "swamper". He also saw something he wanted to salvage out of a pile of trash. While he was trying to pull it out, a dozer hit the pile from the other side to bury it. He got buried too.
Neither operator saw a thing as both individuals got into the "kill zone" inside the ample blind spots. Reports were that lots of people were screaming to get the operators' attention, but it's kind of loud inside one of those things.
