Ventrac owners need to force a safety recall

[HermTDI]

Ventrac owners need to force a safety recall
I just bought a Ventrac 4500-Y with a KX-523 snow blower . This is "Top End" equipment .
As such I expect a minimum of safety features and there in resides a problem with Ventrac. This is heavy duty equipment and it should have a "standard" back-up alarm when you put the equipment into reverse. A back-up alarm should NOT be an "option" that you have to pay an additional fee for at the dealership.
I'm not going to complain about the service that I received from my local Ventrac dealer. This is not their doing. This is a manufacturer's decision to drive profits.
I am adamantly against this type of blatant greed.

A back-up alarm is vital to the safety not only to the operator of this equipment but to anyone in the immediate vicinity of the Ventrac tractor !
I called Ventrac today to talk about this issue and was disappointed by their attitude toward this problem. Their discussion with me was simply go and buy the back \up up alarm if I want it ! This issue is more important than a mere tractor accessory. This is a matter of life and /or limb. The tractor should have left the factory with a back-up alarm . In fact a back=up alarm should be installed on every Ventrac tractor in the field .

I ask for your safety, the safety of your family and the well being of people the come to your property your Ventrac tractor should be equipped with a factory provided back-up alarm.

The Ventrac phone number is: 1-800-393-0893
They have Face Book page (you'll see my comment)

The only way this will happen is if Ventrac owners act in unison.

Think about it..a cheap Home Depot lawn mower comes with a backup alarm. Ventrac, don't cheap out on your customers !

 

[helomech]

It isn't ventracs duty to tell you that you put your mower in reverse. Personal responsibility over forcing people to buy crap. You do realize that even if they are made to do it, it will not be free. The price will reflect the change.

 

[HermTDI]

It isn't ventracs duty to tell you that you put your mower in reverse. Personal responsibility over forcing people to buy crap. You do realize that even if they are made to do it, it will not be free. The price will reflect the change.

There have been thousands of people killed & maimed by agriculture / farm equipment for the want of these devices.. Countless accidents have prevented by back-up alarms. These alarms are not crap.

 

[helomech]

There have been thousands of people killed & maimed by agriculture / farm equipment for the want of these devices.. Countless accidents have prevented by back-up alarms. These alarms are not crap.

Than pay for one, but mandating someone to put something on, and then saying they should not increase the cost is crazy. If it is so important to you, than spend the 50 bucks and put one on.

Stupid people will find a way to hurt themselves.

 

[cpurvis]

I ask for your safety, the safety of your family and the well being of people the come to your property your Ventrac tractor should be equipped with a factory provided back-up alarm.

Don't worry about me; I can figure out when something is in reverse and when it isn't without some stupid-azz horn blaring in my ear. Most everybody can. Rearward motion is the biggest giveaway.

 

[bertsmobile1]

There have been thousands of people killed & maimed by agriculture / farm equipment for the want of these devices.. Countless accidents have prevented by back-up alarms. These alarms are not crap.

If you read the safety instructions , which you obviously did not you would have seen a passage regarding SAFE DISTANCES from the machine.
A mower / snow blower is not a piece of equipment designed to be used in a crowded space , like say a sweeper or tow motor where reverse alarms are manditory.
The manufactureres are not responsible for the enviroment that the purchaser will use the equipment so they allow YOU to decide if extra safety features are required which is a very responsible thing to do.
It makes the person who SHOULD be responsible for the safety of themselves and those around them TAKE this responsibility which is GOOD.
Idiot proof equipment gets used by idiots.
And as a firm believer in evolution, people who stand behind / walk behind operating equipment deserve to be run down and if they have their face buried in their electronic brain replacement while wearing noise cancelling ear plugs they deserver to be badly injured.
Thus every day when they put their foot on the floor and the pain rushed up to their brain they will remember that they and they alone are responsible for their own personal safety.

There is a bill currently before our parliament to absolve the person in charge of a piece of equipment ( including cars & bikes ) that collides with a pedestrian who has their attention diverted by an electronic devise from blame.
Thus if a mental throw back to the apes walks across the road and gets wiped out by a car , tough luck, no insurance cover for them and they will become liable to compensate the driver for damage to their vehicle.

I am over 60 and I can still remember being taught STOP LOOK & LISTEN, something which apparently is now beyond the mental capacity of the mental retards being born into the world now days.

 

[HermTDI]

I guess it boils down to ..."It doesn't matter until it happens to me" syndrome.
In addition to the youth who live on farms, an estimated 259,000 youth were hired to work on US farms in 2012. Fatalities. In 2012, 374 farmers and farm workers died from a work-related injury, resulting in a fatality rate of 20.2 deaths per 100,000 workers.Dec 15, 2014.

1)about 300 youth die each year from farm injuries and 23,500 suffer nonfatal injuries;
2)rates of fatal and nonfatal injuries increase with the age of the victim;
3)fatal and nonfatal injury rates are much higher for males than for females;
4)more than one-half of the victims of fatal farm injuries die before reaching a physician, nearly one-fifth die in transit to a hospital, and about one-tenth live long enough to receive in-patient care;
5)nearly 90 percent of the nonfatal injuries were treated in an emergency room and released; and
6)accidents involving farm machinery accounted for most of the fatal and nonfatal injuries, with tractors being involved in more accidents than other machinery.

No matter what you might think..these machines need a back-up alarm installed befor they leave the factory. The price per unit would be LESS than $15.00

As good as this tractor is, I'm disappointed that this machine did not come equipped from the factory with a back-up alarm system.

 

[cpurvis]

No, it boils down to this: If you want one, buy it and have it put on your machine.

I don't want one and don't want to be forced to buy one just because you do.

 

[HermTDI]

No, it boils down to this: If you want one, buy it and have it put on your machine.

I don't want one and don't want to be forced to buy one just because you do.

Do you even own a Ventrac? If not why are you even commenting ?

 

[bertsmobile1]

And how many people were shot last year ?
Of those who got shot how many were bystanders in no way connected to the shooter or target ?

If you are too stupid to get out of the way or too bone lazy to look behind you when you reverse then you deserve to be injured or to be sued by the person you injured.
I think you will find ATV's or Quad bikes were the single biggest piece of equipment involved in farm non-accidents , accidents are what happens when you don't get yer hole over the hole on time.
Everything else has a cause and the biggest cause is laziness followed by bone stupidity.
The largest number of farm deaths down here was children who should never have been on a tractor falling off grandads knee and no amount of alarms is going to stop that.
Numbers are fine but just how many of them were from a person being reversed over ? probably less that 1%
In fact I would wager the number of reversing injuries would be less than 1% of the number of idiots who were too stupid to apply the parking brake then tried to mount a moving tractor from the side and got run down by their own tractor.
MY ex used to work for Work Cover so she had all the stats, hard to work out weather we should have been laughing, crying or shooting ourselves when you read through them.
Over 70% of all ladder accidents were caused by a lazy twit trying to bunny hop the ladder side ways rather than come down and move the ladder sideways.
As previously mentioned the most tractor related deaths were grand kids falling off grandads tractor and being run down
Number 2 by a long way were children again falling off the back of ATV's ( quad bikes ) and a lot of them were under 5's being doubled by another child under 10, with the full consent of their parents , who should be steralised then locked up for 40 years, but no, we are going to make quads "safer".
Even worse is a policy that if a worker is injured , they take the owner to the cleaners but if it is your own ( or a friends ) child no prosecutions are done because you are so traumatised.
If you happen to read a lot of posts here you will notice that the universal brainless idiot fix for every problem is to dissable the seat switch which is the one really important safety feature which is really needed on L & G tractors.

Go back through your numbers and distil just how many were injured trying to clear a blocked input / feed chute on a piece of operating equipment with their bare hands.
Despite there being seat switches and PTO cut offs with all sorts of complicated interlocks over 100 idiots down here were injured trying to unclog their mower discharge chute in the 2014- 2015 reporting season.

In fact if you really want to know what the REAL PUBLIC think about safety features, start a post "should I dissable my seat switch"
You will find around 90% support for you to over ride the seat switch.
A little less will support disabling the PTO safety switch .
I am yet to find anyone who wants a reverse cut out on either the PTO or engine to be in correct working order.

Obviously you have strong feelings about this but I fear they are way out of sync with the vast majority or people on this list.

And again I refer you to your manual which states people should be 25' away from the mower BEFORE YOU START IT & WHILE YOU ARE WORKING IT