Dr_Zinj
Veteran Member
Actually, the injury rate is a lot more frequent than that. Somewhat more frequent than 1 in 100,000.
From National Ag Safety Database - A Review of Farm Accident Data Sources and Research: Review of Recently Published and Current Research, 4 Oct 2013.
HEALTH AND SAFETY OF YOUTH
Youth present a special problem in the area of farm safety. The Fair Labor Standards Act limits the employment of minors according to age and occupational activity (Runyan, 1992).[1] Some children as young as 10 years old may work on farms with parental consent. Children of farm operators may work for their parents on their own farms at any age. In addition, many children are at risk by living on farms. A study of 169 Iowa farm families highlights some of the safety issues related to youth:
more than 40 percent of the children who operated equipment were not supervised;
about 30 percent of children more than 3 years old played alone in work areas and 80 percent of them played near machinery in operation; and
children began operating equipment at an average age of 12, even though parents believed their children were not capable of operating equipment until age 15 (Hawk and others, 1991).
An earlier study of injuries to farm youth (less than 20 years of age) in 1979, 1980, and 1981 used national statistics (Reesal and others, 1992). According to this study,
about 300 youth die each year from farm injuries and 23,500 suffer nonfatal injuries;
rates of fatal and nonfatal injuries increase with the age of the victim;
fatal and nonfatal injury rates are much higher for males than for females;
more than one-half of the victims of fatal farm injuries die before reaching a physician, nearly one-fifth die in transit to a hospital, and about one-tenth live long enough to receive in-patient care;
nearly 90 percent of the nonfatal injuries were treated in an emergency room and released; and
accidents involving farm machinery accounted for most of the fatal and nonfatal injuries, with tractors being involved in more accidents than other machinery. Other farm machinery involved in such accidents were wagons and combines. However, these findings may be somewhat misleading because the data include deaths due to drowning and firearms and do not distinguish between recreation and farm-related activities as agents of death (Rivara, 1985).
A study of fatal farm-related injuries to children 9 years of age and under in Wisconsin and Illinois from 1979 to 1985 that used death certificate data showed the average annual death rates in the study population were 3.2 per 100,000 in Wisconsin and 1.5 per 100,000 in Illinois (Saimi and others, 1989). The study found that the death rate was substantially higher for boys than for girls, that most fatalities occurred in July, and that machinery was the source of more than one-half of the injuries in Wisconsin and Illinois during the period of the study (Salmi and others, 1989).
If it's any consolation, your kids are more likely to die from the following
Cause Rate per 100,000
Perinatal Conditions 17.7
Congenital Anomalies 8.4
Motor Vehicle Accident 8.1
All other natural 6.4
SIDS 3
Neoplasms 2.8
Homicide (Firearm) 2.7
Circulatory Disease 2
Nervous System Disease 2
Suicide 2
Respiratory Disease 1.8
Suffocation/Strangulation Accident 1.5
Homicide (All other) 1.4
Drowning Accident 1.3
Poisoning Accident 1.2
All other Accident 1
), but doing it is more to teach them there is never too much "being safe about things where heavy machines are involved"... They get to learn in this process too; get on the tractor, check all the controls, tilt the wheel down, turn the key on for the glow plug/intake heater, get the seatbelt on, inspect the instrument panel to be sure there is fuel, start the engine, ensure there is oil pressure and such once it start, lift the FEL, choose a gear range (always low in these situations), release the parking brake, adjust the throttle, and off we go. Just standing there watching the whole process is a learning experience they'll love.
