Editorial: The Power of Safety Professionals to Effect Change

In 2006, Cole et al. (2006) reported on tractor overturn-related injuries in Kentucky from a random sample of farmers that numbered 6,063 respondents. The highest number of people who experienced tractor overturns were operators 16 to 20 years old. In 2007, at a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Tractor Safety Initiative meeting in Colorado, John Myers of NIOSH presented a map of the states with the highest overturn fatality rates: Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. Significantly, four of these states, including Kentucky, overlap the Appalachian region (Cole, 2007; Hard and Myers, 2001). In Kentucky, this region involves farming on slopes, as examined by Saman et al. (2012), who found a high-risk cluster of tractor overturns among ten Kentucky counties in the Appalachian region, with a 97% increased risk of overturn as compared to other Kentucky counties. In 1971, James Arndt of Deere & Company presented a 50-year review of rollover protective structures (ROPS) at a Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) conference. Arndt (1971) estimated that, over the previous 50 years, 30,000 operators had been killed when crushed by tractor overturns in agriculture and construction work. Since then, ROPS have been recognized as an effective device to prevent death in the event of a tractor overturn (Reynolds and Groves, 2000). Nevertheless, the epidemic of tractor-related deaths has continued into the modern era, and the cost of ROPS has been found to be a significant barrier to retrofitting tractors that lack ROPS (Myers et al., 1998). To provide a low-cost alternative, NIOSH safety engineers have designed, tested, and provided instructions for building and fitting cost-effective ROPS (CROPS) onto pre-ROPS tractors (i.e., tractors built before 1968) (Hard et al., 2016). Keywords: NIOSH, ROPS, Tractor overturns, Tractor safety.

Editorial: Response to “ROPS Are Not Homemade”

We are writing in response to the editorial “ROPS Are Not Homemade” by W. E. Field, R. Tormoehlen, S. Ehlers, C. Cheng, A. Talbert, G. Deboy, D. Haberlin, and C. V. Schwab, which was published in the July 2019 issue of the Journal of Agricultural Safety and Health (Field et al., 2019). The editorial warns secondary school teachers and FFA advisors about the potential liability of fabricating and installing low-cost rollover protective structures (ROPS) as service learning projects for agricultural education students. The apparent intent of the editorial is to discourage teachers and advisors from carrying out such projects. We wish to present arguments as to why these are actually highly beneficial projects to undertake, and perhaps one of our best hopes for significantly reducing the number of tractor overturn injuries and fatalities by directly involving our nation’s youth. Keywords: Homemade ROPS, ROPS, Tractor overturns.