Basically Safety: Episode 2 - Workplace Transport

What's this podcast episode about?

Key takeaways:

Practice HSE's Safe Stop

Segregation of pedestrians and machinery

Never be complacent around machinery and vehicles

Welcome to our next episode of Basically Safety!

Meet our two super-hosts Hannah Reeks from Safe Ag Systems and Gulliver Hedley from Strutt and Parker Rural. In this episode, we dive right into Workplace Transport. What it is, what's the problem and what you can do about it.

So, what is Workplace Transport?

The potential to be hit by moving vehicles and machinery, separating pedestrians and visitors on farm. BIG problem in agriculture.

Several people in agriuclture are significantly injured or worse by being hit, crushed or collided by moving machinery a year.

Why does it happen?

Gulliver believes it happens as vehicles and pedestrians are so seen as a necessary and acceptable part of a workplace together. Typically you'll see a farm vehicle reversing or doing its job next to a bunch of people or in an area known for its foot traffic. It's been like that for years and no one has ever had a problem with it.

And it will keep happening until one person makes a mistake and has an incident with a moving vehicle.

Other factors for why these incidents occur are machinery operating early or late hours, late at night, dark winter nights, loud machinery and lots of foot traffic around. This can include family, workers, visitors, members of the public and contractors in that vicinity when you don't expect them to be.

Their experience

When Gulliver first started working in the construction industry he was a part of a team supervising an excavation. The diggers would excavate the dirt, stop and then lift out of the way a little bit before workers went in to continue digging. Gulliver and his team didn't see a problem with it at the time.

However, they were visited by the HSE one day. The advice they gave was all digger operators need to be out of it, with keys out and switched off. This introduced Gulliver to the practice of segregation.

He's practised that method ever since then. It's about knowing where your people and machinery are moving about and doing everything you can to avoid them being in the same place at the same time. If they are together then you need better controls in places other than the "magic high-vis vest".

Hannah shares her family's near miss on their dairy farm. The milk tanker comes in first thing in the morning. Her cousin happened to leave his bike in the turning circle for the milk tanker and it went straight over it. Fortunately, he wasn't on it but it sparked a conversation with the family about what could've happened.

The idea of segregating is very low-cost and simple. Some yellow paint, lines and you can mark out where vehicles turn and any walkways. Extra precautions can be physical barriers like railings along the walkway.

Hannah imagines if the turning area for the milk tanker was painted and blocked off, the likelihood of her cousin leaving his bike there wouldn't be so high.

Gulliver believes complacency is also a cause of these incidents. "I've done it for years and I know what i'm doing" and they can't be told otherwise until an incident occurs. He mentions a training day he had back in construction where lorry drivers to sit in the can and get to see how limited their vision is. They'd then get a person on a bike to progressively get closer to the vehicle until they weren't seen. Demonstrating how restricted their vision is when operating such vehicles.

Common sense isn't always common

People who grew up on farms learn't early on the dangers on farm and what not to do. However majority of workers in agriculture didn't grow up in it and simply don't know. What's common knowledge to a worker who grew up on farm isn't the same for someone who didn't, such as a seasonal worker.

For those workers you need to start at a point of understanding and training in a basic level. Never assume they know or understand the risk right off the bat.

An example Hannah has seen before with getting people to train and talk about blindspots in large equipment was to get in the tractor (with everything switched off with handbrake on!) and get someone to draw around the tractor with chalk the actual distance you can see. This will demonstrate how large the blindspots are.

Gulliver mentions how another company in his construction days trialed an alarm system where each vehicle had a transponder on it that recognised another one on workers' hard hats to let them know whether they were too close. Like a proximity alert system.

The idea was fantastic however in practice it was it was near impossible for workers to do their job. Alarms would go off so frequently that people would zone it out and they had to end up turning it off.

Workers were never close but it would go off when people were walking near it despite everyone knowing.

Practical tips

Guliver worked on a farm where the production workers needed to cross from A to B quite frequently. Which meant crossing a bunch of entrances where machinery where also coming and going. To separate them they routed the walkways behind the barns wherever they could.

However, a few paths still encountered entrances so they implemented a physical control where they put gates that required you to open then and be aware of your surroundings before walking or moving machinery.

We're all so used to working along vehicles that we need to get creative on how to separate pedestrians and machinery.

Hannahs' key takeaway was Safe Stop from HSE. Handbrake on, controls in neutral, switching off the engine and taking the keys out. It costs you seconds but could save many injuries and potentially someone's life on the farm.

Gulliver's takeaway would be to think about the segregation and not solely to rely on the high-vis vest. It's not magic and it won't solve all your problems with visibility.

Informative Links