Question for cops/EMT's/PARAmedics/fire fighters

Because of the comments yesterday about equipment accidents I ask one of my sons who is a volunteer EMT and another local guy who's a volunteer fire fighter who they see most often as farm accident victims.

SO any cops, EMT/PARAmedics or fire fighters from rural areas on here?

Not counting small children too young to operate but get hurt playing on equipment or fall off while riding....who do you guys see more of? Younger inexperienced operators? Or old know it alls?

I know what I saw on tanks in the Army over a spread of 20 years. It was about 50/50. Youngsters who didn't understand how dangerous that stuff really is and older guys who got complacent.

Rick

Rick

I don?t know, but I bet you have it pegged about right.

Young folk learn, sometimes the hard way, until they get comfortable with the machine and their own capabilities.

Old folk remember having faster reflexes and able to concentrate on multiple things at once, and running at a fast speed, but time catches up
with us.

So I would guess both ends of the spectrum. I think auto insurance has the same situation?

Paul

Not a medic or cop i am a nurse that works in a rural hospital er at times, most of what we see come in are from roll overs and farmers getting caught in balers and combines and yes most are over the age of
50, but in this area most of the farmers are in the 50 plus range, not a lot of younger people farming around here right now. And yes you do move slower when you get older almost 60 now and still farming and
have been hurt twice in the last two years just due to not being able to move as fast and react as quick due to arthritis and one bad leg that was injured years ago.

Considering that it is a well known fact that most farmers are over the age of 55 it would be pretty hard for there to be more than a tiny fraction of injuries happening to young farmers

Almost all the agricultural accidents I investigated or had contact with over 20 plus years were ATV accidents. As far as dedicated farm equipment accidents, old guys trying to clear choppers of various types was the next most common, but we're talking one every 7-8 years. English kids, little kids, getting caught in manure spreaders (maybe 2) or in one case a gutter cleaner were the only young people I recall. The Amish do lose more kids, but they actually have their kids work, so the odds go up. I agree, most of the reason it's predominantly older people is because so few young people are involved in agriculture. But young or old, put them on an ATV and there WILL be accidents, mostly rollovers.

Here is probably more info than you wanted to know - from the National Ag Safety Database:

http://nasdonline.org/1241/d001045/a-review-of-farm-accident-data-sources-and.html

An excerpt from the document linked above (note it says rates of injury and fatality increase with age):

"Youth present a special problem in the area of farm safety. The Fair Labor Standards Act limits the employment of minors according to age and occupational activity (Runyan, 1992).[1] Some children as young as 10 years old may work on farms with parental consent. Children of farm operators may work for their parents on their own farms at any age. In addition, many children are at risk by living on farms. A study of 169 Iowa farm families highlights some of the safety issues related to youth:

more than 40 percent of the children who operated equipment were not supervised;

about 30 percent of children more than 3 years old played alone in work areas and 80 percent of them played near machinery in operation; and

children began operating equipment at an average age of 12, even though parents believed their children were not capable of operating equipment until age 15 (Hawk and others, 1991).

An earlier study of injuries to farm youth (less than 20 years of age) in 1979, 1980, and 1981 used national statistics (Reesal and others, 1992). According to this study,

about 300 youth die each year from farm injuries and 23,500 suffer nonfatal injuries;

rates of fatal and nonfatal injuries increase with the age of the victim;

fatal and nonfatal injury rates are much higher for males than for females;

more than one-half of the victims of fatal farm injuries die before reaching a physician, nearly one-fifth die in transit to a hospital, and about one-tenth live long enough to receive in-patient care;

nearly 90 percent of the nonfatal injuries were treated in an emergency room and released; and accidents involving farm machinery accounted for most of the fatal and nonfatal injuries, with tractors being involved in more accidents than other machinery. Other farm machinery involved in such accidents were wagons and combines. However, these findings may be somewhat misleading because the data include deaths due to drowning and firearms and do not distinguish between recreation and farm-related activities as agents of death (Rivara, 1985).

A study of fatal farm-related injuries to children 9 years of age and under in Wisconsin and Illinois from 1979 to 1985 that used death certificate data showed the average annual death rates in the study population were 3.2 per 100,000 in Wisconsin and 1.5 per 100,000 in Illinois (Saimi and others, 1989). The study found that the death rate was substantially higher for boys than for girls, that most fatalities occurred in July, and that machinery was the source of more than one-half of the injuries in Wisconsin and Illinois during the period of the study (Salmi and others, 1989)."