Agriculture holds the record of accidents at work

With an average of 120 deaths per year, Italian agriculture holds the unenviable record for accidents at work. This is figure emerged from the conference "The white deaths in agriculture", held last April 18 in Montecitorio on the initiative of the vice president of the Italian Parliament, Sergio Costa, and organized by Federacma, the Confcommercio federation which brings together the associations of dealers of agricultural and gardening machinery. The incidence of accidents in the primary sector - it was highlighted in the meeting - is twice as high as in the other sectors and is linked either to the lack or to the wear and tear of the basic safety systems of agricultural machines. To aggravate the situation, the failure to implement the revision of agricultural vehicles which could partially stem the problem. Provided for by the New Highway Code, launched in 1992, the inspection of agricultural vehicles has not yet become mandatory despite the issue of a specific inter-ministerial decree launched way back in 2015. Today, it was highlighted during the conference, in our countryside there are still 1.2 million tractors without seat belts and 670,000 without roll bars. FederUnacoma, the Italian association of agricultural machinery manufacturers, also took part in the meeting.

Photo by Eliza Diamond on Unsplash