A 58-year-old farmer in Thorhild County was killed on Wednesday when the tractor he was working on rolled over him.
Cpl. Guy Perreault of the Thorhild RCMP said they received a report about the incident at 10:30 p.m. on Aug. 16.
Perreault said the victim had been out baling in his fields but was outside of his tractor for some unspecified reason. It had apparently stalled or suffered some other mechanical failure.
“He appeared to be working on it,” said Perreault.
For reasons that are still unclear to RCMP, the tractor rolled forward, crushing the victim. He was already deceased by the time his body was discovered.
Perreault said the incident occurred at a farm west of Thorhild, just off of Highway 18.
He said they have not released the name of the victim because they have not yet received permission from the family to do so.
Perreault said the investigation into the incident is still ongoing and they are currently waiting for the coroner’s report to come back.
According to the Canadian Agricultural Injury Reporting (CAIR) survey of all fatal farm-related injuries from 1990 to 2005, machine rollovers are most frequent cause of agricultural fatalities.
Approximately 20.5 per cent of all 1,769 farm fatalities over the 15-year period were the result of machinery runovers.
The majority of farm deaths amongst adults from ages 15 to 59 — a total of 46 per cent — were the result of being run over by machines with no one in the operator’s seat. The practice of bypass-starting a tractor by short-circuiting its ignition system is associated with many of these cases.
Also, unmanned machinery runovers accounted for 23 per cent of all the deaths amongst adults over the age of 60 on the farm.
Preventing deaths from machinery runovers were a major theme of this year’s Agricultural Safety Week campaign, which is headed up by the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association.
“As individuals age, physiological and cognitive changes can occur that may affect their ability to perform some tasks. It is therefore important that an older farmer and his/her fellow workers assess the skills required to perform particular tasks and determine whether he/she can safely perform them,” said CFA safety analyst Theresa Whalen, in a news release.
