Farm Injury Blog : Farm Injury Lawyer & Attorney : Stuart Kritzer Law Firm : Hay Baler Accidents, Tractor Injuries

The College of Agriculture Science at Penn State University has published, “Children and Safety on the Farm”, covering keys to prevention of accidents, job safety analysis, safety audits and other resources for families with children on the farm. The online version can be found at http://pubs.cas.psu.edu/FreePubs/pdfs/ub030.pdf.

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The following is a guest post from Dolan Law Offices:

Farm work involves the use of a lot of heavy equipment. Each truck and piece of machine has the potential to malfunction and to cause serious harm that is not the result of a farm worker’s mistake. Truck accidents, for example, can happen with the truck that does not work as expected and seriously injures the driver, passengers, or those in the path of the defective vehicle.
 

A farm worker who is hurt by a defective truck, hay baler, or other machine may have the right to collect damages against the designer, manufacturer, or retailer who was responsible for causing the defect. Generally, an injured person may recover damages if there was a design defect, a manufacturing defect, or a marketing defect that caused the truck or machine to be dangerous.

Possible Damages for Harm Caused by a Defective Product
A person who is hurt by a defective truck or machine may collect damages if he or she is successful in a product liability lawsuit or negotiates a settlement with the defendant. Potential damages may include compensation for:

• Past and future medical bills and rehabilitation costs;
• Past and future lost income;
• Out of pocket expenses incurred because of the injury; and
• Pain and suffering.

If you’ve suffered injuries in farm equipment or truck accidents, contact a lawyer who can help you get the accident recovery that you deserve.

The Chicago truck accident attorneys of Dolan Law Offices help truck accident victims and other Illinois personal injury victims recover fair and equitable damages for their injuries.
 

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Recently we came across a great web site called AgrAbility, a site focused on “Assisting farmers and ranchers with disabilities.    This informative site is filled with resources for farmers and their families who have been injured by farm equipment.

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The National AG Safety Database references a powerful study,   “Hay Baler Injuries”, written by 3 doctors (McKinnon, Robinson and Masters). It reviews 12 cases of catastrophic injury caused by Hay Baler accidents. Shockingly, most Hay Baler accidents show devastating pattern of hands and arms being pulled in and trapped inside the balers, causing amputations in the field or later for those victims who survive! 

This article can be reviewed in full in the “Journal of Trauma":  Farm equipment manufacturers must take responsibility to redesign this powerful equipment to include more safety features and improved design

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 Recently, we came across a document featuring harvest safety tips published by the Integrated Plant Protection Center (IPPC) formed in the College of Agricultural Sciences at Oregon State University. We thought it would be useful to our readers as well!

Here are some tips to be safe at harvest time:

1: Read the Operator’s Manual (again). Haying equipment is used only during the summer, giving you nearly a year to forget the safety warnings.

2: Keep yourself alert during harvest season: Drink plenty of liquids, eat regular meals, get enough sleep, and take breaks.

3: Make sure all guards and shields are in place on all your harvesting equipment.

4: NEVER try to unplug the baler until you have disengaged the power take-off, shut off the tractor engine, and put the ignition key in your pocket. THIS MAY NOT BE POSSIBLE WITH SOME OLDER MODEL ROUND HAY BALERS WITH COMPRESSION ROLLERS.

5: For conventional balers, remember the flywheel keeps the machine operating for a considerable time after power is disengaged. Never work on a baler until the fly wheel has completely stopped.

6. For round balers, make sure twine is properly threaded and the twine arm is adjusted and in good working condition. Do not feed twine by hand into the baler: Inward-turning rollers will pull your hand in with the twine and hay before your brain can signal you to let them go.

7. With forage wagons, stay clear of the discharge conveyor while operating. Remain in the tractor seat.

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There is no question that farming is an incredibly dangerous, yet vital industry.  Harsh weather conditions, long hours, and heavy equipment all contribute to the danger factors.  Yet at special risk are children.  Thousands of children that live on farms are seriously hurt or tragically killed each year by simply being innocent bystanders, passengers on farm equipment or even helping out. 

Here are three great online sources for farming families: 

• The National Agricultural Safety Database (NASD) has compiled a comprehensive list of safety resources relating to children and farming.
• Farm Safety 4 Just Kids is a great farm safety website designed especially for children.
• Childhood Agricultural Safety Network (CASN) contains good information and video messages for children.

It is up to all of us to raise awareness about the important safety issues surrounding farming and children. 

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Round hay balers were first mass marketed approximately 1972 by Vermeer Manufacturing Company of Pella, Iowa. While these machines revolutionized hay baling by creating a system where only one person was needed to create the bales, its design exposed those using the machine to the loss of their limbs and lives because the unguarded rollers and belts pull people into the in-running nip points. Hundreds of hard-working farmers and their helpers have been catastrophically injured, maimed and killed because of the dangerous design of these machines.

When engineers are analyzing the safety of a design of any piece of equipment, including those made for farming, they should first identify the potentially serious hazards to the operators who will be using it. Once identified, there is a three-step design hierarchy which should be followed in order to eliminate or reduce the known dangers of the equipment. These design steps, in order of importance, are: 

1. Eliminate hazards, if possible, without unreasonably compromising the function or usefulness of the machine;

2. Provide some form of physical protection or guarding from the remaining hazards; or,

3. Provide warnings and instructions which can be easily followed to help avoid the hazards. However, warnings are only to be used as a last resort and are not a substitute for the elimination of hazards or guarding.

Put another way, 1. is the most desirable. If that is not possible, then 2. (guarding) should be used in the design. If and only if neither 1. nor 2. is possible, then 3. (warnings) is to be used. This methodology for design safety has been recognized as appropriate by the National Safety Council, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and other trade groups for more than 50 years. 

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In my more than 35 years of practicing law, it has been my privilege to represent many people who, through no fault of their own, had their lives seriously disrupted and permanently altered when they suffered a catastrophic injury. Among them, none was more courageous than Gary Hawk, a wonderful man who, with his brave and supportive wife, Chris, and daughter, Chelsea, survived the nightmare that followed when Gary, alone in a field at dusk, was trapped in a Vermeer round hay baler for nearly an hour, unable to shut off the tractor which powered the baler. During that time, it gradually pulled off most of the skin and destroyed the muscle and tendons of his left arm and gradually amputated his right at the bicep which became caught between the inward-turning compression rollers of the machine. Nearly 200 other operators of Vermeer hay balers suffered similar fates or worse over a 25 year period!

Gary’s story proved to be of great interest and was picked up by not only the local Denver CBS affiliate but also CBS national news which featured Gary’s story on a segment of the CBS Evening News program, “Eye On America”, hosted by Dan Rather. It was my privilege to appear on national and local television for that story. You can find it on the Kritzer firm website, and clicking on View Clip.

I am proud to say Gary and I are still in touch and he has bravely moved forward with his life. I urge you to watch the clip to learn more about Gary, the kind of work we do and how we have been able to help people such as he and many others.

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One of the most dangerous of all farm machines is the hay baler. According to reports collected over more than 30 years, hundreds of farmers and laborers have suffered unnecessary amputations of their limbs, degloving (removing of the skin and tissue) of their arms and hands, and death because of the unsafe designs used by one manufacturer which share a fundamental flaw: Unguarded belts and rollers which can pull even careful people into the tailgate area, wrapping attachment or, in older models, the belts and compression rollers.

Sometimes, these injuries have happened because the rollers are turning so fast and grabbing the twine, bale wrapping or suddenly unclogged hay so quickly that operators do not have ample time to react and let go, with shocking results. A number of individuals, including one of our clients who had one arm amputated and the other left largely useless because he was trapped in the running machine for over an hour, have been killed, scalped and/or otherwise disfigured and maimed. Other clients of ours suffered the greatest loss of all when their son was killed because he was pulled inside the tailgate area of a baler whose design permits its belts to continue to move while it is open.

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