Among the many hazards facing workers in California's $27 billion agricultural industry is a practice which has apparently escaped public attention, yet accounts for a significant number of deaths and injuries every year. Use of a tractor without a driver saves money, but puts everyone in the field at risk. Mary Jo McConahay is an editor of New California Media Online, a collaboration of ethnic news media which hosts the first multi-ethnic portal on the Internet at www.NCMOnline.com.

MENDOTA, CA. -- The clearing morning mist reveals an astonishing sight -- moving tractors with no one at the wheel, crawling among hundreds of stooped workers. This is illegal, causes dozens of injuries and fatalities each year, yet remains common practice here in California's Central Valley, the richest agricultural region in the world.

The tractors pull flat-bed trailers and platforms which farmworkers load with fruit and vegetables, the stuff of the state's $27 billion farm industry. Workers labor on, around, and sometimes in front of the advancing vehicle.

"I was picking broccoli about 9:30 in the morning when I saw the foreman reach in and accelerate the tractor so it would move faster," remembers Aurelio Eligio Julian of Soledad. Julian, 31, slipped and fell flat in the mud, watching the tractor bear down on him. "I said to myself, 'I am lost,' then I said, 'No, I can get most of my body out."' Julian and a companion screamed "for a minute" until someone stopped the tractor. He escaped with an injured foot that has cost him months of work.

Julian was fortunate. Government inspectors report workers have died from slipping under wheels, or being squeezed between tractor and trailer, when no one was at the controls. Farmworker advocates tell of family members calling out helplessly when loved ones were run over. Often victims are drivers themselves, told to jump on and off the tractor to perform additional tasks.

These dangers are well recognized. California law forbids abandoning the wheel. The Chicago-based Equipment Manufacturers Institute, which includes the nation's major tractor companies, has written to the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration (CAL-OSHA) Standards Board to say that mounting and dismounting "should never be permitted," and even remote controls should be forbidden "in the interest of worker safety."

CAL-OSHA has levied fines in some cases, but they are small (from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars) and thinly spread. California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA) attorneys have successfully taken at least two growers to court.

Violators are hard to catch. On one recent day while traveling with CRLA community worker Ephraim Camacho, driverless tractors were as evident as those properly manned. Set in "creeper gear," they crawl steadily down furrows at speeds from a half mile to two miles an hour. "I'm going to have to go in and tell them they're in violation," Camacho said. He carefully noted the location of offending fields and occasionally pulled out a cellular telephone to notify CAL-OSHA. "This is the fourth time I've reported this field," he said once.

Ruefully, Camacho admitted that a foreman or grower who sees fields being observed can simply tell a worker to board the cab. Another ruse is to place a child at the wheel to make it seem from afar that the tractor is manned. Nevertheless, farmworker advocates have made videotapes of driverless tractors to back up observations, and many report a good working relationship with CAL-OSHA.

For the past year, a group of some 40 growers has been petitioning for an exception to the safety law, which would make their driverless tractors legal. They propose using a kill switch at ground level, with an operator no more than ten feet away.

Richard Quandt, an attorney representing growers argues the device is better than keeping bored drivers at the wheel. "In many cases it's a misnomer to say they're driving at all, because they're dozing off, and would not be useful in an emergency," said Quandt.

But critics say fatigue should be met with rotating shifts, and a kill switch won't protect a dismounting driver from slipping on mud, or crop debris. An agricultural machine design expert who, Dr. William E. Steinke of the University of California at Davis, says a tractor could travel almost 12 feet before an operator could hit the switch, and CAL-OSHA inspectors opposed the request last year in a letter to the Board.

Farmworker advocates reckon fatalities may be a dozen per year, disabling accidents many more, but OSHA only investigates accidents reported or those found from sources such as county coroners.

Farmworkers often do not report incidents because they fear reprisals. On a dirt track between two green expanses of baby lima beans, irrigator Roberto B. displays a forearm cross-hatched with red cuts. He said the scratches came from a driverless tractor that lurched in his direction as he worked. Roberto, 45, asked that his full real name not be used. Months before, he was thrown from a tractor platform and broke four ribs when the distracted driver hit a bump. "The company doctor sent me back to the fields right away with a note to the grower, saying I could do light work," he said. He did not report the accident out of fear of "venganza," he said, ill will on his employer's part.