Chris Bennett: Grain-carting near-miss reminds me of safety
© Johnny Houston For every fatality in farming, there are many near misses. Most of us will have had a near-miss. I certainly know I have.
A few years ago, I was corn carting and had to travel through our parkland. I stopped the tractor and trailer on a hill to shut the gate behind me.
While behind the trailer, and facing away from it, the handbrake failed and the tractor and fully loaded trailer rolled down the hill straight towards me.
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I regret this now, but as an inexperienced youngster I ran around the side and leapt back into the moving tractor, slammed my foot on the brakes and luckily brought it to a stop just before it jackknifed.
The gate I had been closing seconds before was flattened.
In hindsight, parking across the hill would have prevented the accident, but the most stupid thing I did that day was to get back into the moving tractor.
I should have let it go and not risked my safety. I got away with it that day.
Consider if anything like that has happened to you.
Have you ever been up on a dodgy old roof, driven an ATV too fast and hit a bump, or had a cow charge at you while working alone?
The risks taken in the name of getting the job done would rarely happen in other industries and it shouldn’t happen in ours.
According to the most recent Health and Safety Executive (HSE) figures, there were 27 fatalities in our sector over the past 12 months.
Of these, 21 were workers and six were members of the public.
The NFU recently launched a campaign called “Take 5 to Stay Alive”, encouraging us to take five minutes, or as long as necessary, to think about the task at hand and what safety precautions may be required.
It is too easy in the days of mobile phones, wireless headphones, and social media to go about your day thinking about everything except the task at hand.
It’s vital to be actively thinking about what you are doing. You’ll get the job done safely and probably more efficiently too.