The Press WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 1964. Tractor Safety

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30499, 22 July 1964, Page 16

The Press WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 1964. Tractor Safety

It would be a pity if the bad feeling caused in Parliament by abuses (on both sides) of private members’ privileges prevented Mr Connelly’s Tractor Safety Bill from getting the attention it deserves. The claim by the member for Riccarton that he had begun to draft the bill before the Government showed any interest in the subject need not be doubted; but it really is not important. What is important is the opportunity his bill gives Parliament to discuss the need for safety appliances on tractors and the difficulty of legislating to make such devices compulsory. Mr Connelly’s draft sets no date from which safety devices would be required, but would leave that to be fixed by the Government after an independent authority was satisfied that practicable rules could be devised. In effect, then, he merely suggests that this independent authority (including, as well as officials, one representative each of the New Zealand Safety Association, Federated Farmers, and the New Zealand Workers’ Union) should be set up to establish standards of safety. If Parliament were to discuss this approach constructively the Government would then be assisted in preparing its own ideas based on research at Lincoln.

The case for safety devices, either cabs or frames, is that every month three persons are killed in tractor accidents and that upwards of 65 per cent of these deaths could be prevented. The Government has approached the question hesitantly, because the compulsory equipment of tractors with safety devices has been opposed by Federated Farmers (though not by Young Farmers’ Clubs). The reason for the objection is not clear beyond the natural instinct of farmers to oppose further restrictions. But this reform is so clearly in farmers’ own interests and the cost so small (about £BO a tractor) that too much notice should not be taken of their protests. By far the greater number of persons killed in tractor accidents are farmers or members of their families. Though comparatively few farm employees are killed, the Workers’ Union is very properly anxious to see that safety standards insisted on in other jobs apply also to farm work. The real difficulties about legislating for tractor safety are in establishing the organisation to test many different makes of tractors for the many different types of terrain in New Zealand and in making it clear that approval by a recognised authority extinguishes any legal liability that otherwise might arise from the failure of the equipment to avert a serious accident. Neither is Insuperable, or even of any moment, compared with the need to prevent a waste of valuable lives in New Zealand’s most important industry.