Tractor Safety

Probably the worst incident involving a tractor is to get caught in the PTO shaft!


Man dead in tractor accident

October 31, 2006 09:03am
Article from: Agence France-Presse

AN elderly man has died in a tractor accident on a farm near Wangaratta in Victoria.

The Rural Ambulance Service said it was called to a property at Whorouly, in the state's northeast, just before 6.30am (AEDT).

Spokeswoman Tanya Whelan said the 72-year-old man became caught up in the shaft at the rear of the tractor and died at the scene.

Ms Whelan said WorkSafe Victoria would investigate

Many die from rollovers and the like but to have parts of your body caught in a PTO shaft would be slow and painful. Ungaurded PTO shafts are especially high risk but even the gaurds fitted to tractor PTO shafts are totally inadequate and the slack enforcement agencies will not prosecute a designer or manufacturer and as such they do not improve the safety of their products.

I spoke to 10,s of thousands of farmers with the farm safety van for workcover and every single one of them had a close call with a PTO shaft. Many of them told me that their clothes were ripped off or similar which saved them.

Now if the Workcover's and Worksafe's of this country weren't run by insurance companies something would have been done years ago to improve design of PTO guarding so it actually prevented people comming into contact with them.

But no, insurance companies like Workcover run around too scared or totally lacking knowledge in safety or else they would see there are provisions in every safety legisaltion in this country for manufacturers and designers to remove risks.

Obviously they have no knowledge in safety or it would have been done scores of years ago.

Regards
Daniel