Tractors Can Be Deadly Part 1
The American Journal of Industrial Medicine says a 2008 report indicates farmers and farm workers 55 and over are nearly twice as likely to die in farm accidents. Of those fatalities, Tractors accounted for 46 percent of those deaths.Truthfully though, anyone getting behind the wheel of a tractor is in harms way - not just older farmers and workers.
Fortunately, there are groups working to make tractors safer. Chuck Schwab of Iowa State University Extension describes the evolution of rollover protective structures over the decades as an integrated safety feature on farm tractors.
"When we first had some of the initial tractors that wasn't even a feature we even thought of. And you are looking at some of the first types of tractors out there, very large, and overturn was probably not a real problem for them. And as we started to populate we started seeing more overturns and more deaths due to overturn."
--- And Swab says they started creating structures to keep them from turning over.
"It was not until 1985 when these became more of a permanent fixture, meaning whenever you bought a new tractor one of these came in it. It was part of the structure."
--- Since 1985 all those rollover structures have been in place.