THE ROLE OF THE WEB IN THE EFFECTIVE DETECTION OF SERIOUS AND FATAL TRACTOR OVERTURNING ACCIDENTS

The official statistics report published in Italy details that a range of 25-40 fatal agricultural tractor accidents are due to overturning. These figures, published by the government bodies providing the work safety (very often with a remarkable delay due to the time necessary to conclude the investigation on each event included), appear significantly underestimated. This delay can most likely not be eliminated; consequently, the statistical data appears to be non useful to carry out an effective surveillance of overturning accident trends in order to eventually accomplish actions to increase the safety. On the other hand, nowadays internet plays a fundamental role regarding the publications of real time worldwide information, in all fields of the knowledge, including news events. Moreover, many portals have been created on the web for the reporting of live news events in a given area, both internationally and nationally. Furthermore, portals have been created based to weekly or daily newspapers at a local level, obviously reporting important localised events that have occurred. A fatal tractor overturning accident is most likely to be considered breaking news and will certainly be reported on the web portal relevant to the specific area in which this event has happened. So, an accurate survey was carried out on the web, obtaining a realistic situation on tractor overturning accidents in Italy, with the remarkable advantage to learn in real time the progress of the statistics, related to several characteristics regarding events, such as gender and age of the injured, time and location of the accident, make, type, power and age of the tractor, etc.