1. Operator Injury Outcomes for Overturns of ROPS and non-ROPS Tractors
Henry P. Cole, Susan C. Westneat, Melvin L. Myers
Southeast Center for Agricultural Health and Injury Prevention, University of Kentucky College of Public Health, Lexington, KY 40504
Background
Roll over protective structures (ROPS) mounted on tractors prevent operators from being crushed during overturns. A buckled seatbelt keeps the operator within the ROPS safety zone. Approximately 60% of Kentucky farm tractors lack ROPS. More than 80% of farmers who operate ROPS-equipped tractors fail to wear seatbelts.
Goals
Calculate the frequency of six categories of operator injury outcomes for overturns of ROPS and non-ROPS tractors: no or minor injury, injured but no medical treatment, outpatient treatment, hospital admission, permanent disability, and death. These were calculated for operators
(1) who overturned tractors
● without ROPS
● equipped with ROPS
(2) of ROPS-equipped tractors who were
● not wearing a seatbelt
● wearing a seatbelt
Figure 5: Operator fatally injured during a lateral overturn
of a non-ROPS tractor
Method
Figure 6: Belted operator uninjured in a lateral overturn of a ROPS tractor
A telephone survey of 6,063 (8%) of Kentucky principal farm operators was conducted. Operations were randomly sampled from the USDA 2002 master farm list. The survey collected detailed information about each farm’s most recent tractor overturn event and the operator’s injuries. The response rate was 78%.
Significance
Prior estimates of operator injury outcomes that result from overturns of non-ROPS and ROPS-equipped tractors have two weaknesses. First, they focus primarily on fatal outcomes and ignore non-fatal injuries. Second, they are based on death certificate data, newspaper reports, Bureau of Labor Statistics data, OSHA reports, and hospital emergency department records -- none of which provides random, population-based samples of tractor overturn events and their injury outcomes. This study is the first to provide population-based estimates of the frequency of the six classes of injury outcomes for operators who overturn non-ROPS and ROPS-equipped tractors.1
Results
Goal 1 – Injury outcomes were known for 443 farmers who overturned non-ROPS tractors and for 92 farmers who overturned ROPS-equipped tractors. See Figures 1 and 2.
Goal 2 - Injury outcomes were known for 42 farmers who overturned ROPS-equipped tractors while not wearing a seatbelt and for 19 farmers who were wearing a seatbelt during a ROPS tractor overturn. See Figures 3 and 4.
Operators’ full days of farm work lost as a result of tractor overturn injuries were known for 60 non-ROPS tractors and 13 ROPS-equipped tractors. See Table 1. Farm work lost from non-ROPS tractor overturn injuries averaged about 14 weeks compared to about 3 weeks for ROPS tractor overturns.
Table 1: Days of farm work lost as a result of non-fatal injuries from non- ROPS and ROPS tractor overturns
Acknowledgements
The work reported was supported by CDC/NIOSH grant 1R , sub-contract G Human subjects approval was granted by the University of Kentucky Institutional Review Board under IRB protocol # P2G. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Institute for Farm Safety; Lancaster, PA; 2008 Jun
1 Values in Figures 1-4 are uncorrected for farms that went out of business prior to 2002 because of tractor overturn injuries or fatalities and were therefore not included in the sampling frame.
ROPS Status n
Mean SD
Median
Range
Mode
No ROPS 60
97.8
122.6 36
364
365 (8)
With ROPS 13
21.9
28.5 7 92
1 (3)
94.7%