Farm Safety Week focuses on role of faulty vehicles

The role played by poorly used or faulty vehicles and machinery in the industry’s unacceptably high workplace accident statistics were highlighted yesterday as part of Farm Safety Week

With farmers coming into contact with a host of machinery on a daily basis the organisers of the safety week said that tractors, quad bikes, combines, choppers and balers as well as the host of other farm machines all brought their own attendant dangers, with vehicle and machinery related accidents accounting for almost 40 per cent of farm deaths.

“Hands, hair and clothing can be caught by unguarded PTO shafts or other

0 Vehicles and machinery was under the spotlight unguarded moving parts such as pulleys and belts. People can be injured by front-end loaders, falling from a moving tractor or being struck by its wheels,” according to Martin Malone from Farm Safety Partnership Scotland

And the HSE figures released earlier this week revealed that the most common cause of fatality on farms continued to involve vehicles overturning or people being struck by a vehicle.

However North-east farmer, Peter Robertson has instigated a simple measure which, if more widely adopted, could help reduce the number of people struck by farm vehicles in the workplace.

“I decided that to put in place a hi-vis policy, where anyone - no matter their age or purpose - who comes onto the farm must wear a hi-vis jacket or hivis boiler suit.

“We’ve invested in those for our employees and family, and when we have schoolchildren on the farm we ensure every single one of them wears one.”

He said that not only were the vests widely available, but they were also cheap:

“This policy is widespread in nearly every other manual labour industry, such as the buildings and construction sector, so why should agriculture be any different?” said Robertson.