IAN Davey will never forget the summer of 2007. It was on August 23 that 11,000 volts of electricity coursed through his body after his tipper trailer hit an overhead power cable on his Cornish farm, changing his life forever.

He was stuck by a leg to his tractor door for more than a minute, and had he not been wearing rubber soles he would have been killed.

"How I managed to get away no one will ever know," he said at the relaunch of a farm safety drive, staged at Truro Livestock Market. "But I did get unstuck and that was just as well because three minutes later the tractor caught fire."

Mr Davey, who farms 500 acres of beef, sheep, arable and free-range poultry at Trerulefoot, near Liskeard, suffered a dislocated shoulder and a shattered humerous, which had to be pinned, as a result of the incident.

He said: "I was completely conscious all the time. I'd never felt in fear of my life before, but I thought I was a gonner that time. I was in a great deal of pain."

Tipped up

The farmer had been waiting for his combine harvester driver when the accident happened. "I got to the field before the combine had been around it for the first time," he added. "I tipped up the trailer to try to dry off its floor, so I wasn't needing to look up, otherwise I'd have seen the wires. They ran around the corner of the field."

Once clear of the stricken machinery he telephoned the fire brigade and then the combine driver decided he should call for an ambulance.

Mr Davey spent six days in Derriford Hospital, and counts himself very lucky to be alive. "They told me in hospital that it looked as though someone had smashed my arm with a sledgehammer," he said.

"One of the problems was that the minimum heights allowed for overhead cables were fixed in the days before trucks could be tipped 20 feet up in the air," he added. "Within a year of my accident someone on the A38 touched the same cable just a couple of hundred yards from where I had done."

He added: "You can never be too careful. You should always be aware of what can happen on a farm."

His wife Helen was faced with running the farm without him, and looking after their two young children. She said: "We still had 200 cattle, free-range chickens and the harvest still needed to be finished. It was a bit of a nightmare. Ian was debilitated for quite a long time with his shoulder and unable to drive or do anything."

The Daveys were swift in lending their support to the Health and Safety Executive's renewal of its Make the Promise – Come Home Safe campaign, first launched a year ago. He was joined at the market by Rob Pearce, the principal inspector for the HSE in Devon and Cornwall, and leading safety campaigner John Woolcock, of Cornwall Farms Safety Committee.

The stark message was that people were still dying in needless farm accidents. Across Britain 38 workers were killed in farm-related incidents last year, one in Cornwall, two in Devon, two in Somerset and one in Dorset and 77 were seriously injured.

More than 2,600 farmers in the South West have signed up for the campaign and Mr Pearce said the challenge was for them to keep the promise, which was difficult when they were battling the weather or working to tight time scales.

"Losing concentration or taking seemingly harmless shortcuts is when horrific accidents can happen," he stressed. "Over the past 10 years 455 lives have been lost on British farms. That's hundreds of families and farms devastated. Let's make 2010 the year that everyone comes home safely."

The HSE offers training, support and guidance to farmers on how to keep themselves and their workers safe, as very often fatal accidents have common causes. The campaign is being supported by both the NFU and the National Federation of Young Farmers' Clubs.

Awareness

NFU South West spokesman, Ian Johnson, said: "This campaign is of massive importance to our industry. Anything that raises awareness of the dangers farmers and farm workers face, and helps identify the activities where they are most at risk, can only have a positive impact. We hope everyone involved in agriculture gets to know about the campaign, talk about it and spread the message. It's in everyone's interest to make the working environment as safe as possible."

James Chapman, vice chairman of the NFYFCs, said: "Encouraging farmers to work safely has always been one of our key priorities. I know only too well what can happen when safety isn't put first – as I lost my left arm when it was caught in an unguarded PTO shaft. It only happened because I was working under pressure, trying to get a job done as quickly as possible."

Although only 1.5% of the working population is in agriculture, the industry accounts for a fifth of work-related deaths annually.

As part of the campaign farmers can ask for Promise Knots – made of baler twine – to place around their farms as a simple but ever-present reminder of their commitment to come home safe.