Lawn Tractor Safety
Lawn Tractors > Lawn Tractor Safety
While using a lawn tractor can make caring for your lawn easier and less
time-consuming, knowing how to safely use your tractor is important.
Lawn tractors cause about 45 deaths and 50,000 injuries each year in the
United States alone, but you can help ensure that your lawn tractor
experience is a safe one by becoming safety-aware and arming yourself
with some lawn tractor safety guidelines. This article about lawn tractor safety, published in the CDC's National Agriculture
Safety Database, is a good place to start.
In most cases, lawn tractor accidents are caused by careless or impulsive actions, driver fatigue, and distractions. Thankfully, all of these things can be avoided and the resulting accidents prevented.
First of all, make sure that your tractor is supplied with all of the available safety equipment and options in place. This means choosing a tractor that is designed with improved safety in mind. Your home improvement store or tractor sales store should be able to tell you what safety features certain tractors have.
Once you choose a tractor, be sure to read and understand the operator's manual well before you hop on and fire it up. Get to know your equipment before you use it, and also make a point of learning how to keep it in safe condition.
In order to be safe, your tractor should be properly maintained.
Develop a maintenance schedule, and stick to it. Make sure that
everything is in working order before you get on the machine each time,
and don't forget to ensure that safety interlocks are working.
Check to make sure that all shields are in place as well.
Be sure you are wearing the right clothes. Pants, ear protection, goggles, and heavy boots are necessary. Make sure you are fully covered to protect yourself from potential projectiles. Also, avoid wearing jewelry, loose clothing, and long, flowing hair which can become caught in your tractor's rotating parts.
Finally, never leave your machine on and unattended, and be sure to follow all traffic rules if you take your mower out on the road.
With the right precautions in place, your tractor mowing experience is more likely to be a safe one.