According to information from the University of Iowa Great Plains Center for Agricultural Health (USA), press clippings help researchers categorize agricultural injuries and illnesses, which helps plan out new health and safety measures.
The Center began collecting clippings from across the US in 2002, scaled back to just four states (Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska) for a couple years, then decided to expand in 2007 to collect clippings for all 9-states of the upper Midwest: Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin.
The great plains, USA
Center Director Wayne Sanderson and colleague Murray Madsen like press clipping data because it includes important and interesting details and insights.
Madsen says that although press clippings cannot always be considered as authoritative, they “provide a unique source of details regarding non-fatal injuries”, especially because this type of information is not captured well in any of the nine States.
He also remarks that “press clippings offer a clear picture of the major safety issues that deserve continued attention”.
For example, tractor overturns account for about 40% of fatal and 12% of the non-fatal incidents reported in press clips. “In addition to overturns, one cannot look at the press clippings and fail to see the loss of farmers who are run over, engulfed by grain flows, or mauled by livestock. And you cannot miss the toll of injuries to drivers and passengers in the thousand-or-so motor-vehicle crashes involving farm equipment each year in our 9-state region” Madsen points out.
As a matter of fact, nearly half of all non-fatal tractor and machinery-related incidents reported in press clippings last year were in crashes between farm equipment and motor vehicles on public roadways. Madsen observes, “Increased attention to crash prevention on rural roads, and sharing roads safely with farm equipment, can result in fewer crashes, fewer injuries, and fewer deaths.”
A similar survey has been carried out since the beginning of 2007 by the editorial staff of this blog. The accident reports have been compiled from the Italian online press and can be viewed in the Observatory section (in Italian).
