Fatal Tractor Accidents in the Agricultural Sector in Spain during the Past Decade

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript is of great interest for the study of accidents in the agricultural sector. The authors have found an interesting line of work, obtaining information on fatal accidents in the media. They already had some publication where they used this technique, but the results presented in this manuscript are novel, as well as the statistical treatment performed. The results obtained are very interesting for the scientific field, offering very useful data on accidents that can be used by other authors. In my opinion, the manuscript can be published and fall within the scope of the journal. However, the following clarifications and corrections should be made before its publication:

Lines from 153 to 156: It must be said that the study is restricted to the Spanish territory

Figure 2: The numbers of the value intervals of the legends must be increased, otherwise they will not be seen if it´s not printed with high quality or when printed.

Lines from 256 to 262: Authors should indicate on which previous study or data they base such assertions.

Line from 282 to 284: Huesca has a more rugged relief than Teruel. Granada and Malaga are also very mountainous. This can be verified in the following study https://www.fbbva.es/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dat/dt10_2010.pdf .  In addition, these provinces also have small plots. Therefore, the authors' assertions in these lines needs further clarification.

Lines from 308 to 309: Galicia also has smaller tractors and therefore with fewer safety measures, it also has an irregular relief, could not these factors also be the cause of fatal accidents? This needs to be clarified. Only as a comment or recommendation for the authors, if the total number of accidents (fatal and other accidents) are analysed, some aspects could be clarified, if there is a high number of accidents the problem is the orography or the working conditions, if it is only high the number of fatal accidents the problem is the safety of the tractor.

Line 340: The text after "Continuing" must go in another paragraph.

Line 380: It should be clarified whether they are accidents in general or fatal accidents.

In section 4 (Discussion) there are no comparisons with the work presented by the authors. They must be included.

Line 448: Check the link, it doesn't work.

 

 

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The quality of the writing is sufficient and the structure of the paper follows the guidelines of the journal.

The introduction is well written and includes the most significant studies on fatal accidents on tractors.

The Material and Methods section should be improved since some parts could be misunderstood by the reader. My suggestion is to expand this section reporting some examples of the performed statistical analysis. Moreover, in the Material and Methods section should be reported major information on the topography and most common agricultural operation performed in the cited Spanish regions. In order to maintain high readability, my suggestion is to perform this edit through a proper literature citation or the creation of a paper appendix. Another weak point of the described methodology is that is not well described how the fatal accident reported by the media were acquired.

Regarding the results, the 3.1 section is sufficiently clear, while section 3.2 should be improved. In particular, all the data seems to be correctly reported, but the logic of the dissertation is quite messy. My suggestion is to rearrange the results in tables or graphs to improve the clarity of the presentation.

This also reverberates on the discussion part, since the results in section 3.2 are not well presented.

The conclusion part is well written.

 

As a consequence of the aforementioned reasons, I could not recommend this paper for publication as it stands.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The work uses quite simple, although interesting methods of obtaining data. At work, the authors should use units of the SI system, not HP should be kW. The presented results give the opportunity to verify official data with the results presented in the mass media. On figure 1 What does the shaded area mean? Descriptions of legends in Figure 2 are too small. Increase the font. It is worth adding in the summary comparison of the results obtained in relation to other EU countries.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

the paper could be published as it stands