04:28 pm, Monday 15 July, 2013

Photo: SafetyCulture Library

Farmsafe Australia is calling on quad bike manufacturers to take some action as number of deaths from quad bike accidents increases.

Farmsafe Australia chair, Charles Armstrong told ABC News that safety is important and should be a major part of business.

He said it will “reduce risks to those that work and live on our farms, it will also improve our bottom line.”

“Even non-fatal injuries can have major cost implications on things such as delays in harvest, damage to equipment and downtime needed to recover from such injuries.”

With up to 30,000 quad bikes in the country, Mr Armstrong said they need to be retro-fitted for rollovers or with crush protection.

Safe Work Australia figures show that there have been ten quad bike fatalities so far this year.

A research on quad bike safety is in progress and results are expected to be released later this year.

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07:36 pm, Saturday 21 April, 2012

A worker was seriously injured by a piece of machinery in a cotton field at Walgett in Northwest New South Wales this week.

ABC News reports that harvest has started in NSW and Queensland, and workers were under pressure to get the bumper crop picked and processed.

According to Farmsafe Australia executive officer John Temperley, the cotton harvest is a potentially hazardous workplace.

“The size and the scale of machinery associated with cotton picking and harvest; you do get, or the potential’s there to get, really horrific accidents, particularly crush injury under machinery, by rams, being run over.”

WorkCover will conduct an investigation over the incident.

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