Another Death - Overturned Tractor

[40_acre_mule]

In today's local newspaper...

78 yr old man cutting with bush hog at his home
Tractor overturned into pond
Son finds tractor
Fire rescue pulls tractor out
Coroner says head and neck crush injuries

My guess...
Probably doing exactly what he has done a thousand times before
Not wearing seat belt
Got too close to edge of pond
Probably no ROPS

 

[Egon]

Not being scurrilious as any death has great impact.

In some cases such as this one often wonders; Did the heart attack come before the injuries or?

 

[patrick_g]

An 80+ year old man near here propped up his brush hog to access the bottom but didn't secure it very well. If fell on him crushing him to death. Not much confusion about cause of death in this incident but no one is sure low long he lasted pinned under there before he expired.

Ever since this event I have been oh so very cautious working under my brush hog.

Pat

 

[RoyJackson]

An 80+ year old man near here propped up his brush hog to access the bottom but didn't secure it very well. If fell on him crushing him to death. Not much confusion about cause of death in this incident but no one is sure low long he lasted pinned under there before he expired.

Ever since this event I have been oh so very cautious working under my brush hog.

Pat

If you're under an implement rigged to the 3PH, you cannot depend upon the 3PH itself as one of the supports. You'd want a minimum of 3 jackstands...4 would be better. As well as releasing hydraulic pressure on the 3PH to ensure a solid seating of the jack stands.

 

[patrick_g]

Roy, I have TNT and back up my brush hog to my steel bed tandem 12,000 lb load rated trailer, raise it up and sit it on the back of the trailer and use two jack stands in the front with it still on the 3PH which prevents it from slipping off the trailer and stands when I am under there with 3/4 inch drive tools yanking like crazy.

I also have some HD saw horses (legs are 4 inch diameter heavy wall pipe and HD 6 inch "C" channel connecting them.) I put the back of the cutter on that and the front on jack stands if I want lots of room to access the bottom with less crawling.

NEVER crawl under something that isn't properly supported. The time you save skipping the steps required to make you safe isn't worth the risk of being crushed into a vegetable or worse.

One of the scariest things I see over and over is folks using cinder blocks as at least part of the way to hold up a car, trailer or whatever to work under it. That is NOT a safe thing to do and if you keep doing it you may very well qualify for a Darwin.

Pat

 

[horse7]

A gentleman farmer had to remove the front tire from a CUT, used a hi jack (sort of a tall glorified bumper jack, if you remember what those are you are way more than knee high to a grasshopper! ) -- anyway, he had gone off wherever, leaving the tractor with the hi jack at a funny angle holding up the front corner of the tractor. I wasn't going to go anywhere near it....

He has since graduated to 100% Chinese hydraulic jacks, the kind that might work 1000 times, or might work 10 times... but he usually drops the front onto the ground if the tire is removed at least. Or maybe the jacks just leak down

 

[patrick_g]

Cheap jacks are not likely to get you into trouble if you ALWAYS USE GOOD JACK STANDS.

Most of the ag stores around here sell the "high lift" type jacks as does Harbor Freight so any kid who can read and walks through the store might know what one is irrespective of his height measured in grasshoppers.

Pat

 

[Soundguy]

My guess...

Not wearing seat belt

Probably no ROPS

Those 2 go together.. if you don't have a rops .. you NEVER wear a seatbelt..

Soundguy

 

[40_acre_mule]

Soundguy,

I agree, if you don't have ROPS, don't wear the seat belt.
What I was trying to say is that he probably either didn't have a ROPS...or...if he did, he wasn't wearing the seatbelt.
Either way, I suspect a lack of safety equipment may have contributed.

 

[Defective]

From the description I see...

"Tractor overturned into pond"

"head and neck crush injuries"

This tells me 2 things.

1) It was quite possible that a ROPS would have had no effect. Pond bottoms are not solid ground & a ROPS can sink right in.

2) It is also possible that a seatbelt could have been a killer even if he wasn't crushed.

I am NOT saying ROPS & belt are wrong. I am a firm believer in them.

What I AM saying is that in this particular case, they are irrelevant.

The closest I've ever come to rolling into a pond, I was doing everything right except paying enough attention to the fact that there was ice on the ground. I turned the tractor directly into the pond and left it there until spring because there was no way in heck I wanted to be belted to the seat of an inverted tractor under the ice. I suspect the belt would have killed me and I KNOW the ROPS would not have been much help in that muddy bottom.