Safety principles for farm tractor operation

Graduation date: 1963A large portion of farm accidents involves tractors. The study assumes that safety education is one method of decreasing the accident rate. The problem facing educators involves fragmentation of safety information and insufficient understanding of motivation as influenced by factors such as emotions and attitudes. The majority of literature most readily available specifically pertains to tractor safety and contains fragmented rules, laws, and facts. Some of the less widely disseminated literature deals with the psychological, physiological, and educational aspects of safety, The most recent study trends explain the psychological factors of accidents to determine why the accident happened, while earlier studies were concerned primarily with tractor and environ mental conditions The purpose of the study is the identification of safety principles which will be useful to Oregon high school teachers when teaching tractor operation to freshmen The procedure used in the study involves the development of tentative principles from safety literature. These principles are reviewed by agriculture teachers and experts in psychology, agricultural engineering, and teacher training. The revised results are the findings of this study. Twenty-two safety principles related to tractor operation and tractor safety education are developed. The psychological principles deal with decision-making, hazard perception, reaction time, stress, operator's strength, and hazard threat reduction. The physical principles deal with mechanical reliability, stability, tractor maintenance, moving parts, unattended tractor, heat, fire prevention, and roadway hazard. Educational principles identify the inadequacies of knowledge, motivation, operator needs, training in decision-making, principles and laws of learning, inspection and maintenance, and integration of safety instruction