Fire Suppression is the reason for much mowing and trimming in the West
Beat me to it,
@ultrarunner. Same reason down here in the south where things grow a lot thicker and faster for a lot longer every year. That kind of grass will grow back in about 2 weeks down here. But, since things stay so green, they only cut the ROW's twice a year here. It's a great way to hide all the litter that no one threw out the window of their car.
As for tree control, if you plant yellow pine seedlings down here, in 5 years, you can typically harvest pulp wood for paper mills, and in 10, some are large enough for lumber, and at 15, you've got some top quality clear lumber. That's why so many abandoned cattle and arable farming and turned their pastures into tree farms. It's no different if the trees are volunteer growth, except they're a lot thicker and get stressed, then attract pine beetles which will wipe out whole forests. Most pine species are basically very tall weeds here. In a field next to the house I grew up in, I cut hay on that field every year until I finished high school in 1976. After I left home, my step-grandfather got too old to take care of the cattle and got rid of them. He quit haying that field and just let it go feral. It has been logged 3 times since then. For lumber, not paperwood. All volunteer growth. That's averaging a crop of lumber every 15 years or so.
Long stretches of I-65 in Alabama were completed within the last 30 years. Needless to say, the shoulders and slopes were clean when finished. In the last two years. I have seen thousands of trees more than 30 inches diameter at the stump being removed from the slopes and ditches because they become death hazards on the shoulders on highways with elevated speed limits. Cars don't stand much of a chance against a 30 inch pine, and suddenly, the state is liable for the hazard. All it took was a couple court cases and big payouts for 'wrongful death', despite the fact the driver was clearly at fault. The cash made from the timber and mulching of the stumps was quite possibly enough to pay off those suits.
What it looks like to me in the photo, is that the rear tire(s) may have been under inflated in efforts to provide traction. I see no evidence of
ballast splashed on the tractor or the ground around it, either. If the tractor started sliding, it may have rolled both tires off the rim as can be seen on the right rear. Can't see the left rear to know for sure, though. It does have a very narrow stance and certainly wasn't the best choice of equipment for the job. It looks like a brand spankin' new Johnny that someone bought because they suddenly had a very lucrative new contract with the state. Inexperience? Possibly. Wrong equipment configuration. Definitely. Duals on the rear and ballast filled tires would have made a huge difference there, but still may not have helped with improper techniques. If nothing else, cutting that slope in an arc pattern would have minimized the time the tractor was completely sideways on the slope, and placed on tire as the lowest point of contact most of the time. It also makes shorter work of the slope. It just takes more driving. The mangling of the front end of the rotary could have been done with a 90 degree flop. Steel does funny things when you put enough force on it. The mashed down grass above the tractor appears to be from folks looking at the sleepy Johnny from that side (aka rubbernecking), or perhaps where folks went to help the operator get out. A lot smarter to approach a rollover from the uphill side, and most responders will know that. The grass I see on the cab looks like it was probably pitched up there when the tires pulled it loose and flipped it up there during the flop, or perhaps was from someone climbing up on the cab to help the operator out. I'm guessing what's laying in the cut grass closest to the road is the RH door of the cab. The stack is not bent or muddy, no broken (shattered) glass in the cab, and neither of the RH rims are bent or dirty, so I don't think it rolled completely over. A tractor that size would DESTROY those rims if it rolled over on them. Wheels are simply not designed for impact loading from the side. My vote goes for under-inflated tires getting rolled off the rims, sudden shift to the left and down on a slope to the left, and the operator becomes insignificant when the tractor got sleepy and laid down. The bat-wing and cab/ROPS is probably what stopped the tractor from going any farther. If he was wearing his belt (sure he was) that's probably what saved him from serious injury.