In this instance, the vehicle’s wheel nuts had become loose, allowing the wheel to fall off.

Other worrying cases were detailed by the Queensland Mines Inspectorate in a report compiling the serious accidents and high potential incidents for last month.

One mine worker was knocked out of an Emico bucket by a falling section of ventilation tube.

He was removing the vent tube from the roof of an underground roadway at the time and suffered concussion after hitting the ground.

In another incident, a shuttle car managed to run over its own supply cable while wheeling towards the boot end.

The cable was pulled in half, causing open arcing and a quick response to apply electrical protection.

There was also a mid-shift firing at an “underground mine” before all workers were cleared to a safe area, but the inspectorate added no one was injured.

At a surface coal mine, a rigger lost the tip of his left middle finger when it was caught between the lifting chain and some sleepers that were being moved at a dragline shutdown pad.

A dump truck driver was surprised when the truck’s front wheels lifted off the ground for a moment before falling back again.

This was caused when sticky wet coal got held up at the rear of the tray, and the driver sustained soft tissue injuries in the cabin.

A front-end loader driver also suffered an epileptic seizure while he was behind the wheel.

Fortunately, the loader was stationary at the time but the inspectorate said the driver was still allowed to operate heavy machinery despite previously reporting a seizure at work.

Watering down haul roads is important to keep the dust down, but in one case a dump truck slid and spun 90 degrees on a wet haul road and stopped when it hit the bund.

Another dump truck driver ran into a bund wall on a straight section of a haul road.

He lost control after reaching over to find his water bottle in the cabin.

Yet another dump truck incident occurred when a steering circuit oil filter became loose and sprayed oil on a turbo in the engine, causing a small fire that was extinguished by the truck’s auto-fire suppression.

But this incident happened twice in one week and another two trucks were found to have similar issues with their steering circuit oil filters.

All up, loss of control of vehicles accounted for 28% of the incidents in July.

Mechanical incidents were 21% of July’s total, while vehicle collisions accounted for 15%.