“We have a BCS self-propelled rototiller which comes equipped with a kill switch that stops the motor should the tiller ever get away from oh, say, an old man. I have found, though, that it is less hand cramping if one wraps a bit of cloth around the kill switch so it will not need to be held constantly. Normally, this works fine. However, on one particularly good tilling day, I seemed to have struck a root which caused the tiller to lurch and buck forward on its own, thus pulling me to the ground, rather rudely as I remember it. The tiller then, having a ‘bit of cloth’ on the kill switch, took off for the house. At that point it seemed rather like an errant mule that was choosing to end the work day and it seemed as though it was going to proceed to the barn on its own accord. I wouldn’t have minded so much except to get to the barn it was going to have cross the pond and I was less than certain it could swim. Of course, once I have been thrown to the ground, my getting vertical from a down position is at best quite a feat; to do so in an open field with nothing to pull up on is really pretty iffy. Nevertheless, ten feet or so from the pond, I did manage to catch hold of one handle of the BCS and – after being dragged for a bit – I wrestled the machine to the ground to keep it from swimming. Then as usual after such episodes, I quickly looked about to see who and what all I was entertaining. I noticed the blue heron was leaving rather abruptly I thought. And it is perhaps coincidence that the red-tailed hawk chose just that moment to sing out.”

Thankfully this episode had a humorous, instead of tragic, ending. Considering the thwarted kill switch in the context of farm safety, what can we say? Clearly it wasn’t a knowledge gap – my dad knew this wasn’t the “right” procedure – and it wasn’t exactly a motivation gap (though he was motivated to prevent his hand from cramping up). Rather his phrase that, “normally, this works fine,” points to something else.

I think this can be explained by a concept I learned recently from the field of health care risk management called “drift.” As I understand it, the basic idea is that we usually know what the “best practice” is (in a health care setting, for example, nurses should always check the label on a medicine before dispensing it instead of assuming it’s the right medicine because it’s in the place the right medicine is supposed to be stocked). On a farm best practices include fixing the broken cover around a PTO shaft before using that piece of equipment again and not thwarting a kill switch. However, due to other factors (time crunch, inattention, multitasking, and so on) we often don’t follow the best practice, we drift. Then once we’ve “gotten away with it” (I reached over the moving PTO shaft without becoming entangled; I wrapped a “bit of cloth” around the kill switch and it didn’t result in disaster) it’s more likely I’ll reach over it again, and again, until we’ve done it so often, and drifted so far from the “safe way” we stop even thinking about the fact that the cover ought to be fixed and the kill switch left alone.

If we notice that our safety practices have “drifted”… how might we reset our habits so we don’t just continue doing what is perhaps more convenient, if also more dangerous?

1. NOTICE WHAT YOU ARE DOING

Since June is National Safety Month, it’s a good time to take stock of your habits and notice where you may have drifted from what you know is the safe way to do things.

2. ADOPT “SAFETY FIRST” AS A POINT OF PRIDE

Safety isn’t just about following someone else’s list of rules.  Adopting a “safety first” approach to our work can help us succeed over time, taking pride in the excellence that comes from doing careful work.

3. IS IT WORTH IT?

Shortcuts may shave off a few seconds or minutes in the scheme of things, but serious injuries can disrupt our work for days if we are seriously injured. We all know terrible stories of things that have gone wrong in the blink of an eye that someone has done “a hundred times” before. The price of “drifting” from our safety practices can be devastating.

A simple place to start is to review the list of common causes of farm accidents and fatalities on our injury prevention page (see link below). If we set about intentionally correcting our safety practices that have “drifted,” I think we’d see a decline in the number of farm accidents and fatalities that occur routinely on farms.

Have you succeeded in balancing safety and work flow in your operation? We’d love to hear your ideas and successes in the comment section below.