OffBalance
Bronze Member
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2005
- Messages
- 60
- Location
- Snohomish, WA (N of Seattle)
- Tractor
- 2005 New Holland TC24DA
On Saturday, my Grandpa rolled my New Holland TC24. He broke his leg (femur) and is in the hospital for a while.
He was showing me how to use a chain on the loader to lift big rocks. The front wheels of the tractor were on a small mound (12" high or so) in the center of our flat garden area. Then he jumped on the tractor, released the brake, and forget to put it in gear (it is a hydro). He stepped on the forward pedal, but started to go backwards. I saw him continue to try to step on the forward pedal, but not the brake pedal. He rolled about 30 feet backwards across the flat area of the garden, slowing almost to a stop, but reached the edge at the top of a very steep hill.
The tractor went off the edge, and rolled at least one and a half complete times before landing nearly upside down on a log. My Grandpa apparently fell out on the first inversion, but I could only see the bottom of the tractor, so I don't know. I assume he was not wearing his seatbelt.
To give a bit of background, my Grandpa is 94, and has been using tractors constantly since he was 12. He lives alone on 200 acres, and uses his tractors and bulldozers nearly every day, even now. All of his equipment is manual, and this is the first hydro on which he has spent real seat time in his 82 years of operating experience.
Some comments:
Lifting the rock had nothing to do with rolling over - the hill is very steep at the top, and a rollover would have occured even if the bucket was empty and close to the ground. Similarly, I had just installed a tiltmeter, but that was also irrelevant. The garden area has only a 1 to 2% grade. It just happens to be next to a very steep hill.
I have done the same thing (forgetting I was in neutral) a couple of times in a different part of the yard, but always have been able to figure out the problem quickly enough to avoid any trouble.
The tractor has safety interlocks, so that you have to have the brake set and the range select in neutral when you get off the seat, or the engine is killed. Therefore, all of us have gotten in the habit of always putting the tractor in neutral when getting out of the seat, even when turning the engine off. I am not sure if this is good or bad. The tractor doesn't move too much when in low and you are not pressing a hydro pedal. We had a good discussion in the hospital about why the neutral between the H and L ranges is freewheeling. You have to come to a complete stop to shift ranges anyway. I believe a much safer solution would be to have just H-L with no neutral, or Park-Hi-Lo, or some sort of special interlock to get into a freewheeling mode. I have never needed neutral on this tractor, and even on my Grandpa's manual equipment, I only rarely have coasted deliberately in the last 25 years.
Obviously, this could have turned out much worse, and my Grandpa is still very shaken and upset about the situation. He has had a hip joint replaced and knee replaced on that same leg, so he had to have this multiple fracture repaired with a plate on the outside of his femur, screwed to the bone pieces. He has broken a finger or two when operating heavy equipment, but this was the first major limb. Due to his age, this can actually be a very serious injury.
My wife had the presence of mind to grab the camera when the ambulance was there, and captured the dramatic scene I have attached.
He was showing me how to use a chain on the loader to lift big rocks. The front wheels of the tractor were on a small mound (12" high or so) in the center of our flat garden area. Then he jumped on the tractor, released the brake, and forget to put it in gear (it is a hydro). He stepped on the forward pedal, but started to go backwards. I saw him continue to try to step on the forward pedal, but not the brake pedal. He rolled about 30 feet backwards across the flat area of the garden, slowing almost to a stop, but reached the edge at the top of a very steep hill.
The tractor went off the edge, and rolled at least one and a half complete times before landing nearly upside down on a log. My Grandpa apparently fell out on the first inversion, but I could only see the bottom of the tractor, so I don't know. I assume he was not wearing his seatbelt.
To give a bit of background, my Grandpa is 94, and has been using tractors constantly since he was 12. He lives alone on 200 acres, and uses his tractors and bulldozers nearly every day, even now. All of his equipment is manual, and this is the first hydro on which he has spent real seat time in his 82 years of operating experience.
Some comments:
Lifting the rock had nothing to do with rolling over - the hill is very steep at the top, and a rollover would have occured even if the bucket was empty and close to the ground. Similarly, I had just installed a tiltmeter, but that was also irrelevant. The garden area has only a 1 to 2% grade. It just happens to be next to a very steep hill.
I have done the same thing (forgetting I was in neutral) a couple of times in a different part of the yard, but always have been able to figure out the problem quickly enough to avoid any trouble.
The tractor has safety interlocks, so that you have to have the brake set and the range select in neutral when you get off the seat, or the engine is killed. Therefore, all of us have gotten in the habit of always putting the tractor in neutral when getting out of the seat, even when turning the engine off. I am not sure if this is good or bad. The tractor doesn't move too much when in low and you are not pressing a hydro pedal. We had a good discussion in the hospital about why the neutral between the H and L ranges is freewheeling. You have to come to a complete stop to shift ranges anyway. I believe a much safer solution would be to have just H-L with no neutral, or Park-Hi-Lo, or some sort of special interlock to get into a freewheeling mode. I have never needed neutral on this tractor, and even on my Grandpa's manual equipment, I only rarely have coasted deliberately in the last 25 years.
Obviously, this could have turned out much worse, and my Grandpa is still very shaken and upset about the situation. He has had a hip joint replaced and knee replaced on that same leg, so he had to have this multiple fracture repaired with a plate on the outside of his femur, screwed to the bone pieces. He has broken a finger or two when operating heavy equipment, but this was the first major limb. Due to his age, this can actually be a very serious injury.
My wife had the presence of mind to grab the camera when the ambulance was there, and captured the dramatic scene I have attached.
