Not much gets done on the farm today without a tractor, but working around tractors can result in some of the most serious injuries or deaths on the farm if care is not taken. John Shutske, Agricultural Safety and Health Specialist with University of Wisconsin Extension, says tractor rollovers remain the leading cause of death in tractor accidents.
“Thanks to the rollover protective structure or ROPS, we’ve made a lot of progress compared to when I was a young farm safety specialist, we’ve seen a dramatic reduction in farm fatalities, and that’s largely because of rollover protection. At the same time, we still see a lot of tractors out there without ROPS. Tractors can roll over either sideways, which typically involves either, you know, rough terrain, people hit a rut or they drive over a stump or a rock or, more often, a slope. Any slope that’s greater than, I would say, 12 to 15 degrees is potentially dangerous.”
Shutske warns another major area of concern involves PTO entanglements.
“We still do see these incidents. Even though they are fewer and they’re further between, we don’t see as many per year, when they do happen, people underestimate how incredibly powerful. Even something like a, you know, a 45 horsepower utility tractor, you compare that to me as a typical human being, I can generate about a tenth of a horsepower when I’m out there working. If you become entangled with that piece of equipment, if it’s a piece of clothing, if it’s the string from like a hoodie, if I start to get wrapped up, I actually begin to rotate with that shield.”
Shutske says the most common kind of lost-time work injuries are falls which occur when getting on and off equipment.
“If you fall just a couple feet, yeah, you could sprain ankles, you could break legs when you’re getting on and off that equipment. We always talk about three points of contact. By going from two to three you increase your stability by 50% and if you do slip or fall, you’ve got some additional points of balance. We always want to think about a three-legged stool and it’s exactly the same when you’re getting onto and off of equipment. It’s tempting if you’re in a hurry to jump that second or third step from the top and that’s when we see the sprained ankles and the torn ACLs.”