Morgan McArthur for Straight Furrow

24 February 2000

If you were pinned under your tractor’s wheel for five days what would you think about?

It actually happened to a Canterbury farmer while cutting firewood back in February. The story of his rescue and survival was amazing when I read it.

He must have drawn some powerful lessons from the whole ordeal. No doubt his perspective on the value of life has changed and I’ll bet his injuries will forever affect his quality of life.

What would you think about?

Well, for starters, I would be wondering how the heck I got under there!

I don’t know the circumstances of the incident but like most accidents there was probably more to it than just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Safety experts tell us that 80% of accidents are preventible. Someone else said that good judgement comes from bad experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgement.

It’s no secret that agriculture is a dangerous business. There is often too much to do and too little time to do it. Sometimes testosterone can override good sense. An overzealous can-do Kiwi ethic may put us in peril’s path when there’s not enough help so we do it by ourselves…

And what if we’ll be wrong about “she’ll be right?” We may have just played the lotto of luck. And lost.

It only takes one person’s misfortune, like this Canterbury farmer’s, to remind me that answering one short question could prevent a long life of misery. The question?

“What If?”

Thinking ahead about what could go wrong and what we’re gonna do about it if it does can go a long way toward keeping life and limb intact. Let me tell you a brief story to illustrate this.

I used to own a monstrous 1966 Chevrolet Caprice car. It was a Yank Tank. With a HUGE motor it had lots of Go! but not much Whoa!

One day while motoring along at high speed I was approaching a stop sign. In my lane a semi-truck was lumbering through the intersection. Oncoming in the other lane was a huge ute with bull bars. Without a concern in the world I went for the brakes. And something very unusual happened.

The pedal went to the floor.

And the car didn’t slow one bit.

Oh dear! 100% Brake Failure!

As the semi grew bigger and bigger in my windscreen I tried everything. The emergency brake was frozen with rust. Downshifting did no good. I even considered doing a Fred Flintstone stop, sticking my leg out the door…

Just before impact a vacant parking lot appeared off the side of the road. I panic-jerked the wheel, the big car did a tire-howling 360 degree turn like the batmobile and rocked to a stop.

I just avoided a big accident (but I experienced a little one that was much more intimate).

Luck, not skill or safety thinking, had just saved my life.

But what happened next tells the real merit of What If? thinking.

After I’d gathered my wits (and cleaned up the seat), I proceeded to drive to my destination in the center of a city as large as Auckland. Brakeless.

This was STUPID. (Hey, I was young.) I had no brains, I had no brakes and I had everything to lose. But NOW I was paying attention. Now I was asking the question What If? and answering it as I went. I was planning ahead for what was happening and for what could happen. I was very much awake at the wheel!

I made that trip without incident or accident. And even though I was without brakes, I may have been safer than many other motorists on the road simply because I was alert to the worst that could happen and how I would respond to it. I was asking the question What If? To me, that’s the essence of living safely.

It’s a lesson I’ve never forgotten.

The plight of a woodcutting farmer in Canterbury reminded me of how quickly situations can turn from fair to foul. Safety, particularly in the business of agriculture, is something worth thinking about. Seriously.

Don’t wait to be pinned under the wheel of misfortune to ask yourself the question What If?

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