Roadway Safety Initiative for the Growing Safe Tigers Program

Abstract

The agriculture sector employs over two million full-time workers in the United States and nearly 900,000 youth reside on farms with 50% of those youth involved in agricultural work (NIOSH, 2018). The U.S. Department of Labor has identified many agricultural tasks as being hazardous to youth and nearly 300 fatalities and thousands of injuries occur to American children each year in farming accidents. Youth who have a background in agriculture have the potential for early exposure to dangers related to the agriculture industry when farming and operating tractors while living or working on a farm (McCallum, Conaway & Reynold, 2009). Youth who are not exposed to the agriculture industry may have a decreased awareness of safety practices with all types of equipment and operations. Changing demographics, background, training, and experience levels lack alignment with modifications based on the technological advancements in agriculture (Snyder, French, Field, Tormoehlen, 2013) and present a need for continued education and safety training. Incidence rates of injuries have been shown through multiple studies to be greatly reduced when proper and appropriate safety instruction has been administered to laborers, parents of children involved in farm work, and children involved in farm-related tasks (McCallum et al., 2012; 2009; 2006; Marlenga, 2004).

The Clemson University Agricultural Safety program was developed in 2019 with the purpose of this program to increase awareness of agricultural safety procedures, maintenance operations, and safety operations for youth ages 14-18 to work safely in the agriculture industry. As the program has grown and expanded, reaching roughly 700 students in 2022, new objectives have emerged. Public roadways are very dangerous environments and are often traveled by farm workers when moving between fields (Ramirez, 2016). While the number of farm vehicle crashes is small compared to the number of crashes on roadways, there is still a large number that occur every year. It was estimated during a five-year period between 2005 and 2010, there were more than 7,000 crashes involving farm equipment in a nine-state region (Ramirez, 2016). Farm vehicle crashes are often attributed to many unique characteristics about farm vehicles, including larger sizes, slower speeds, and farm vehicles being equipped with a variety of attachments (Karimi & Faghri, 2021). With this information in mind, we seek to increase public awareness of the hazards that are commonly associated with farm vehicles and roadways, from both a farm vehicle operator perspective and a passenger vehicle operator perspective.