The SRUC Health and Safety Team have created metal plaques and posters displaying the Safe Stop Principles on all of their key sites. They will also be putting the Safe Stop stickers inside all of the SRUC machinery.
- Engage handbrake
- Controls in neutral
- Switch off engine
- Remove key.
While these rules may seem like common sense, it is usually due to drivers ignoring one or more of them that farm accidents happen. In the last ten years, nearly 40 farm workers were killed when their own vehicle ran over them after not engaging the handbrake and a futher 30 were fatally injured after being pulled into moving equipment.
Head of SRUC's Environment, Health and Safety team, David Collins says: “Farming is one of the more dangerous industries to be involved in, but we can help make it safer by ensuring our students really appreciate the importance of following simple health and safety guidance. As well as putting up these signs and stickers, we have also developed an internal farm safety training course which all our agriculture students will complete.”
The College has also reassessed students’ access to agricultural machinery by introducing a skills card. The skills card, issued by the relevant tutor upon completion of training, will identify what types of vehicles students are authorised to drive, and all farm vehicle keys on campuses are now kept in key safes.