Journal of Agricultural Faculty of Uludag University, 2016, Volume: 30, Number: Special Issue, 325-333 325 Analysis of On-Road Farm Tractor Accidents in Hatay Province of Turkey from 2000 to 2015 Muharrem KESKİN 1* , Yunus Emre ŞEKERLİ 1 , Aysel ARSLAN 1 1 Mustafa Kemal University, Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Biosystems Engineering, 31040 Antakya, Hatay, TURKEY * Corresponding author: mkeskinhatay@gmail.com ABSTRACT Agriculture is usually considered among the three most hazardous sectors together with construction and transportation. Study results report that about half of the incidents in agriculture are related to machinery and half of those incidents are related to tractors. Also, the major source of injuries and fatalities was tractor rollovers and runovers. It is crucial to study the previous farm tractor accidents and draw conclusions to reduce the fatality and injury. In this study, data concerning on-road farm tractor accidents were studied covering the years of 2000 to 2015. A total of 177 accidents occurred during the study period and 28 of them caused fatality as 149 of them resulted in injury. In total, 29 victims were killed and 407 victims were injured summing the total number of victims to 436. In fatal accidents, most of the incidents (42.9%) were caused by tractor rollovers while in injury accidents, crashing with another vehicle constituted the majority of the incidents (38.9%). Most of the fatal accidents (78.6%) and injury accidents (55.7%) occurred in village roads. Two out of three victims in both fatal and injury accidents were males. 64.3% of the fatal accidents and 77.9% of the injury accidents took place in daytime. Almost one-third (35.7%) of the fatal incidents occurred at night. 26.6% of all incidents occurred in the Altinozu district while 18.6% of all accidents occurred in the month of June. The data were also analyzed in terms of other factors including tractor type, weather condition, road surface condition, number of vehicles involved in the incident, time (hour) of incident, operator age, and operator education level. Keywords: Farm tractor, Safety, Accident, Fatality, Injury, Hatay, Turkey INTRODUCTION Agriculture is considered among the most three hazardous sectors together with construction and transportation (Lundqvist 1996). In several countries, the fatal accident rate in agriculture is double the average for all other industries (ILO 2000). Franklin et al. (2001) stated that the fatality rate in agriculture was four times higher than the rate of other industries in Australia in 1989–1992. According to Lundqvist (1996), 51% of agricultural workers, 46% of construction workers, and 37% of transportation workers feel themselves at risk in their work environment. Machinery such as tractors and harvesters has the highest frequency and fatality rates of injury in agriculture (ILO 2000). Wilkins et al. (2003) reported that approximately half of the fatal agricultural injuries were related to tractors and at least half of these fatal injuries were due to tractor overturns. Rollover protective structures (ROPS) are used to create safe working conditions for tractor operators in case of tractor rollover. The use of ROPS in farm tractors has a significant effect in decreasing the fatality. If there is ROPS and the seatbelt is fastened, the incident is expected to be non-fatal for the tractor operator. Whitman and Field (1995) indicated that ROPS were undervalued by senior farmers; while a majority of them (88%) accepted ROPS’ effectiveness, only 42% had ROPS on their primary tractors. Springfeldt et al. (1998) stated that the use of ROPS increased from 6% to 93% as the fatalities significantly decreased in their 30-year study period in Sweden. Loringer and Myers (2008) reported that number of tractors with ROPS increased from 38% in 1993 to 51% in 2004 in the US; however, this has not been sufficient to decrease the rate of tractor overturn deaths and incentive programs targeting older farm operators and low-income farms are suggested to increase ROPS use. Hard and Myers (2011) found that states with the highest percentage of ROPS on tractors generally had lower fatality rates for tractor overturns in the US. Myers and Hendricks (2010) reported that tractor overturn fatality rates declined by 28.5% between 1992 and 2007 in the US and tied this reduction partially to the increased prevalence of ROPS on farm tractors. Seatbelt use on tractors has also been studied by many researchers. Myers et al. (2006) studied tractor rollover incidents and the presence of seatbelts and stated that if the seatbelt was fastened on ROPS-equipped tractors, only minor injuries were observed on the tractor operator in an overturn. Many studies have been conducted on safety issues with farm machinery in developed countries where researchers used statistical data or collect data through questionnaires. However, most developing countries do