Agriculture remains the most dangerous sector of the economy. The high number of agriculture workers that are injured or die in workplace accidents has inspired two companies to join forces to help reduce such deaths.
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Startups, Zero Harm Farm and Ag-Tech Industries are giving away $100,000 in digital farm safety solutions making it easy to collect vital near-miss incident data, and reduce serious injuries and deaths on farms.
In the past five years, 104 quad bike accidents were reported in Australia with children under 11 accounting for 10 per cent of deaths. Over the same time period, rural insurer FMG received on average a daily claim for quad bike accidents, amounting to 2,000 claims and more than $8.1m in payouts.
The push to make crush prevention devices mandatory on quad bikes has been contentious issue between policymakers, farmers and bike manufacturers.
However, farm safety advocates have held that many life threatening injuries seen in bike rollovers could be prevented by devices that reduce likelihood of being pinned under the machines.
Ag-Tech Industries manufacture crush prevention roll bars or operator protection devices. Their product was one of two manufacturers approved for installation under the Quad Bike Rebate Scheme when it was announced by the Victorian State Government in 2016.
From hardware to software, Zero Harm Farm offers a mobile-based Health and Safety application for easier compliance and training processes in agricultural businesses.
Co-founder Mark Orr says over 6,000 businesses using the application currently are demonstrating excellent safety culture. He says, "the challenge is the overwhelming proportion of agribusiness not doing enough to manage workplace risk."
Both he and Ag-Tech Industries' GM operations, Weston Stewart, believe there is little or no enforcement of the legal requirements to notify authorities like Worksafe of near miss incidents, which leads to low levels of investigation particularly in the case of quad bike incidents.
"There seems to be serious lack of research and 'real world data' in regard to the effectiveness of crush protection devices on quad bikes." Stewart adds, which has fostered reluctance for some farmers to implement the added safety measures.
The companies are offering a free 12-month subscription to the Zero Harm OHS application for each customer purchasing a LifeGuard OPD product. Zero Harm Farm have also captured the attention of insurers, Insure247 who have partnered to reward safe agribusinesses, offering users of the app reduced insurance premiums.
