An Evaluation of Combine Harvester Accidents in Turkey

There are over 17 000 combine harvesters in Turkey harvesting over 10 million ha of cereal, corn, soybean and sunflower crops. No study was found on combine harvester accidents in Turkey; thus, the aim of this study was to examine the combine harvester accidents towards understanding and decreasing the injuries, fatalities, and monetary losses. Accident data were obtained based on accident news and included accident type, place (road, field, region, province), time (month, day), driver age and gender, etc. A total of 194 accidents between 2002 and 2017 were studied. 116 of the incidents (59.8%) occurred on fields while 78 of them (40.2%) were on road traffic. The total number of casualties were 228 (61 killed and 167 injured). Field accidents were more fatal than the road accidents (25.0% vs. 9.0%). The most two common incident types were fires (41.4%) and entanglement of body parts to machinery (25.9%) in field incidents while crash / collision (65.4%) and rollover (16.7%) in road incidents. Incidents were more frequent in Southeast Anatolian (25.9%) region and Central Anatolian (30.8%) region in field and road accidents, respectively. Both field (72.4%) and road (75.6%) accidents occurred dominantly in summer months. In 65.5% of the field accidents and 91.4% of the road accidents, the victims were transferred to the hospitals by ambulances. All operators (100%) were male in both field and road incidents. As most accidents are of human error, safety training and inspection are needed to reduce the incidents