Accidents Involving Agricultural Machinery on Rural Roads in Iran (A Case Study of the Kermanshah province)

Accidents related to agricultural machinery have not been the subject of a significant research effort in Iran, and the lack of a detailed study in this field is having a vital impact on developing guidelines and manuals. For this reason, in this study, accidents in certain provinces of Iran are analyzed and then a descriptive method is applied for assessment of accidents in three major categories, which are human, agricultural machinery and road parameters. The statistical population of the study consists of details from agricultural machinery accident records occurring on rural roads, the total accidents on rural roads and the subjective opinions of experts. The results of the study have revealed that the highest and lowest frequencies of accidents occur in summer and winter, respectively. Statistical data also shows that Golestan, Gilan, Lorestan and Mazandaran provinces (provinces with the highest agricultural acreage) exhibit the highest accident frequencies, respectively. The assessments demonstrate that the critical reason for most of these accidents is “the driver’s lack of attention”. The assessments also show that the peal time for accidents is between 16:00 and 20:00. In addition, according to the results, 20- 30 year-old drivers with low levels of education are the most vulnerable in these sorts of accidents. Other results are that driving licenses for a considerable proportion of drivers have not been checked, and the narrowness of the road has been found to be the most important road parameter in such accidents