An elderly man tragically died after becoming trapped in a car wash in Springvale, South East Melbourne, in Australia. 

The man had driven into the car wash and left his vehicle to re-enter an access code. When he tried to enter his car, the wash cycle had already started, and his car door became stuck by a gantry. The driver was trapped. 

Emergency services arrived quickly, but it took Country Fire Authority firefighters 16 minutes to remove the man from the machine.

Paramedics were able to revive him, but he died several days after he suffered from asphyxia from the prolonged period without oxygen to the brain. 

An international oil company, Chevron, was charged with the death of the elderly man and its attorneys appeared before the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Monday, April 17.

Chevron was accused of four breaches of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

Another customer, Pietrina Di Noto, witnessed the horrifying incident and told the court that she watched the elderly man’s tragic fate unfold. She said that the man asked her to move her car so he could enter the code. When the man saw the machine move, he tried to get back into his car, but the wash cycle had already started. The man only managed to get a foot inside the car before the car wash trapped him.

WorkSafe Victoria accused Chevron of not taking steps to eliminate risks, like failing to install cautionary signs advising drivers against leaving their cars during the wash cycle and failing to install safety mechanisms such as anti-collision bars or similar systems to detect an impending impact between the machines and obstacles in the wash bay.

The court documents claimed that Chevron could have reduced or eliminated the risk by setting up boom gates that would only allow entry to the wash bay after providing a valid access code.