I read what someone said about making the highways safer; he said if we outlawed seatbelts and required that each car had a sharpened 12 inch spike protruding from the center of the steering wheel that highway deaths would be cut in half. His point was that the operator of the vehicle was the major determining factor in how safe a given car is. No seat belt and a spike would make the majority of people much safer drivers.
I would apply the same logic to tractors. The most important safety feature is the operator. Don't depend on safety features to protect you. Be afraid when you are on a tractor. It is inherently a very dangerous machine. I posted a year or two back when there was a thread about "seat time" that I conservatively estimate I have spent at least 10,000 hours in a tractor seat. I can only remember once or twice when I almost hurt myself. Once was very recently when the front wheel/axle picked up a one inch diamater limb that had been broken off with a sharp end left on it. The sharp end of the limb caught momentarily on my boot, forcing my foot back. It slipped off and went under the tractor. If it had caught just right, it could have severely cut me. I was lucky. I had mowed that area before and the limb wasn't there. It was in high grass that only gets mowed about every two years. I have no idea how the limb got there. The only way I could have avoided this was to have just not mowed in the area I was in. Mowing those areas are part of the reason I have a tractor. That is what I mean about inherently dangerous.
I sometimes do things that manufacturers and people on this board say never to do. For instance, when I am baling hay, I sometimes get off the tractor with the baler running at full operating speed. I need to be able to look in the throat of the baler, or look at the side of the baler to determine what is causing a feeding problem, or what may be making a different noise. I am always extremely careful not to get closer than about one and one-half times my height (approximately 6 feet) to any operating mechanism. I would never work on it, or make adjustments while it is running. I figure at that nine or ten foot distance, even if I trip and fall, I won't get in the mechanism. Some would say even that is dangerous. Maybe so, but it is one of the risks I am willing to take. I think if you have a constant awareness of the danger, then you won't become careless.
As for guards and warnings. I think most of them are put there as a CYA device for the manufacturers. I have jokingly said that more people have had strokes and heart attacks trying to grease a piece of equipment with some kind of guard making the fitting inaccessable than have been hurt by the lack of a guard. I would never send a hired driver out on a machine without all the guards and warning decals in place. If I am operating an older piece of machinery, or one where someone has removed a guard myself, I don't worry about it. I KNOW that pto can kill me, whether it has a guard or not. I ain't going to get close to it either way. I KNOW better than to walk under a lifted bucket on a FEL or tail gate on a baler. My baler has a supposed lock-out hydraulic mechanism that would prevent the tail gate from falling in case of hydraulic failure. I absolutely did not trust it. The only way I would go under that gate was with the lock-out engaged and somebody with me to call for help if I got caught.
Anyhow, I'm not downplaying the importance of warning decals and guards. What I'm saying is that the most important safety feature is between the operators ears. It is impossible to make machinery fool-proof because fools are so ingenious. Be careful.
