THE ART OF SAFE REVERSING

5 October 2001




THE ART OF SAFE REVERSING

A busy yard, big trailers,

unsighted drivers. The worst

possible combination of

circumstances when it

comes to reversing safely.

Peter Hill explains the

background to the Health &

Safety Executives back-up

safely campaign

THE full-page advertisement says it all. Looking into the reflection of a rear-view mirror, pretty much all that can be seen as the tractor reverses in the farm yard is the bulk of a blue silage trailer.

Yet that is as good as the view gets. The mirror is clean and shiny; not spattered with mud or opaque with accumulated dust, nor cracked from some long-forgotten impact. But it still can not reveal what – or more especially, who – may be standing or walking behind that trailer.

"There were 10 fatal accidents resulting from people being struck by moving vehicles last year, several of those involved vehicles backing-up," explains Andrew Williams, Stoneleigh-based senior inspector with the HSEs agricultural inspectorate. "The campaign is intended to draw peoples attention to this particular hazard in the hope that the number of incidents will be fewer in future."

Manufacturers of tractors and farm vehicles such as telescopic handlers have done much to improve driver visibility – especially to the rear in the case of telehandlers. But in the hustle and bustle of a busy stock-feeding routine, silage-making season or grain harvest, it is inevitable that absolute care and attention is sometimes sacrificed – however unintentionally – for speed and efficiency.

Andrew Williams identifies other dangerous circumstances: "There is a crucial period when reversing into a dark building from bright sunshine when it is impossible to see anything beyond the outline of the entrance," he points out. "It takes just a moments inattention for someone in the building – perhaps guiding the reversing vehicle – to become a victim."

What about solutions? The obvious answer is to get drivers into the habit of leaving their cabs to check no one is about before they back-up. Or at least sounding the horn when doing so. Reversing bleepers and closed-circuit television systems (CCTV) can also play a role here.

But first, Mr Williams suggests, consider ways in which reversing hazards can be eliminated or at least reduced.

It may be possible, with some modification of yards, to introduce one-way movement of delivery and farm vehicles or make sufficient room for vehicles to turn around or gain access to grain pits and other facilities without having to back-up. Such changes – like a drive-through grain intake pit – could improve efficiency as well as safety, he points out.

Improved lighting inside doorways to buildings can make people more visible without much cost or effort. Similarly, retro-fitting a reversing siren should not be beyond the capabilities of someone with workshop experience.

The sound of these audible warnings are familiar enough in towns and industrial locations on delivery trucks, buses and similar vehicles but are pretty much limited to telescopic handlers and wheeled loaders on farms. Even there they are not universally popular.

"We get calls from noise enforcement officers following complaints about the beepers fitted to our telehandlers from people living close to a farmyard or grain store," notes Gordon Day of John Deere. "It seems ironic, for something intended to improve safety, that their regular bleeping can be a source of irritation and something that possibly contravenes drive-by noise regulations."

Reversing alarm manufacturer Brigade Electronics believes it has the solution to this particular difficulty thanks to technology developed at Leeds University. The newly-introduced bbs-tek alarm emits broadband rather than conventional sound.

"In place of a single frequency, its sound is broadly based across the frequency range," explains Philip Hanson-Abbott. "The sound is therefore less piercing and dissipates rapidly, so is less irritating, yet at the same time more audible at lower volume. Its directional characteristics mean people can tell instantly where the sound is coming from."

At present, it is Brigades more conventional alarms that find their way on to agricultural vehicles.

"As yet, these devices are not specifically required, however as an inexpensive means of reducing the risk of reversing accidents, failure to use them has implications under the Health and Safety at Work Act."

Telescopic handlers, wheeled loaders and, more recently, grain and forage harvesters are being fitted with either standard alarms, which emit beeps at a fixed volume, or the more sophisticated Smart version which adjusts its volume according to the level of background noise.

These items are available for retro-fitting from automotive electrical and diesel factors and should be relatively easy to fit by wiring into the reversing lights, reverse gear switch or powershuttle control. But there is little demand when they are not fitted as standard, it seems. Valtra, for example, offers a £55 reversing alarm as an option on its tractors but few buyers take it, the company reports.

Similarly, CCTV is used more for monitoring machine performance – on potato and sugar beet harvesters, for example – than safety.

"Yet a waterproof camera with wide-angle lens, and a monitor in the cab, would enable drivers to see what they cannot see at present – the area behind their vehicles – for relatively little cost," says Philip Hanson-Abbott. &#42

Backing into a dark grain store leaves the driver unsighted. A reversing alarm would help as would better lighting but drive-through access to the intake pit would eliminate the danger altogether.

It may become irritating, but the beep, beep, beep of a telescopic handlers reversing alarm can alert people on foot to a potentially lethal hazard.


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