5/12/05 - The Managing Director of Hercules ROPS, Martin Cooper, met today with three leading ROPS experts at the University of Tennessee's Institute of Agriculture, to discuss retrofit ROPS initiatives for the U.S.A.

The meeting followed up a recent visit to Australia, by Dr. Mark Purschwitz, a Research Engineer with The National Farm Medicine Center, in Wisconsin and Dr. Eric Hallman, who is Director of Cornell University's Health & Safety program.

Apart from Mr. Cooper and Dr. Purschwitz, the meeting was also attended by Assistant Professor Melvin Myers, from the University of Kentucky & Professor Paul Ayers, from the University of Tennessee's Department of Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science, who chaired the meeting.

Under discussion was the very high incidence of tractors without ROPS in the U.S. and the frequent and unnecessary loss of life due to tractor roll overs. Called an "occupational obscenity," in a NIOSH report written in 1993, this leading cause of fatalities on American farms, is still to be addressed in 2005.

There are 220 to 270 tractor "crush" deaths occuring each year in the USA and data from Sweden and Australia's ROPS initiatives show that these deaths would be virtually eliminated if ROPS were retrofitted to all older tractors.

A range of strategies to encourage retrofitting and barriers to implementation were discussed. These included the disparity in standards and regulations across the country and the availablilty of retrofit ROPS patterns to suit the U.S. market.