Alex,  I made my comments, knowing full well the very stupid stuff that I did as a kid.... without elaborating details.  And knowing the very stupid stuff that I have seen adults do on farms...... again, without going into detail. 

I don't intend to be insensitive.  However, I agree with Tim - 7-year old kids should not be running skid loaders.   And 3-year old kids should not be riding in the buckets of skid loaders, or tractor loaders, for that matter.  Not too many years ago, I remember a young farm kid was killed was riding in the bucket of a tractor loader here in PA. Again, a very stupid, preventable mishap.  Parents need to make it clear: riding in the bucket is not allowed.  Period.  No, that will not prevent all accidents, but it will prevent that one.

The thought occurred to me today......  it was just a couple of weeks ago that the agriculture world was worked up in a lather about Dept of Labor's intent to enforce child labor laws.  The agriculture world went ballistic, and the Dept of Labor backed down.  Now, we have to read stories like this one.  Let's just be very up-front and blunt here:  it is incidents like this one, and similar other ones, that get people - bureacrats and political types - to think they need to implement the kind of rules they wanted to implement.  They didn't just sit around one day and say "gee, we think agriculture needs to be more regulated."  No, they came to their decision because of the number of stories of people - kids and adults - who get hurt in agriculture.   Let's face it.  If we want to keep the government from implementing more rules and regulations on agriculture,  then agriculture needs to step up voluntarily and do all it can to keep more incidents like this from happening.   If we can't improve our safety record voluntarily, the government WILL step in and force it upon us.  And, as you can see from the recent proposed rules,  we won't like the what the government proposes.

enough said?