Tractor Safety

[sawdustdad]

I'm going to post this here as it relates to tractors, but if it should be moved to general discussion, that would be fine.

I want to relay an incident that happened to me Easter Sunday in hopes that it might help prevent someone else having a similar experience.

I've been around and used various tractors and lawn mowers for 40 years. Loaded them on trailers, moved them around. A lot. In a hurried moment, I tried to put one of my cub cadets on my flatbed and rather than use the winch I installed last year for just this purpose, I decided to drive it up the ramps. Ramps I've used this way many times before. Seemed like an OK thing to do at the time. But I was in a hurry. It was getting dark.

The front of the tractor, at the top of the ramp, went airborne (bounced? Not sure) and then the entire tractor flipped over backwards with me in the seat. Left leg went through an opening in the left ramp (between the ramp's angle iron slats), keeping me in position while the tractor upended and came down on top of me.

I tried to push myself away but the tractor's steering wheel hit me in the left eye and pushed my eyeglasses into my eye socket, tearing most of my eyelids and breaking the bone structure under the eye socket. In the melee, I also tore a tendon in my right shoulder rotator cuff.

I'm home after a helicopter med flight from a rural hospital in eastern Virginia to a trauma center in Richmond and a 4 day hospital stay, two eye surgeries to repair the eye socket and eyelids, a splint on a broken ankle and a looming shoulder surgery in 4 to 5 weeks. They saved my eyesight, and everything else will heal eventually.

As bad as I'm banged up with lots of other scrapes and bruises, it could have been even worse. A 700 lb. piece of cast iron falling from basically 5 feet, could easily have killed me. So I thank God that wasn't the outcome.

I never really thought of this hobby as dangerous. But we all do stuff that is a bit sketchy--don't grab the safety glasses every single time you know you should be wearing them, don't wear a proper respirator painting, etc. Short cuts, a sense of urgency, hurried and hasty decisions, all combine to create an accident. Don't be complacent.

I just want everyone to be safe, use a winch, don't ride these little tractors up short or steep ramps. A few minutes waiting for the winch is such a little price to pay to avoid an accident.

I'll be back to normal in 3 or 4 months after the shoulder heals. Meanwhile, while recuperating, I may hang with you guys a bit.