There is a woman in my community who had both arms pulled off in a tractor accident. The PTO shaft caught her coat sleeves, and pulled her in. She has one prostetic arm, and the other is reattached at the elbow. The PTO shield is there to keep you from falling onto the shaft end, just like the PTO shaft shield is there to keep clothing and body parts from making contact with the actual shaft. Hopefully, you would hit the cover or you cloths would snag that, and it would stop spinning. There is no way to mitigate all of the dangers involved with farm tractors- they do what they can to make it safer. I find it a little awkward to install the PTO, but I can't remove the cover on mine. It is the base for the ROPS and the pivot point for the lift arms. I deal with it, and once I learned the trick for installing the shaft, it's no big deal. On a side note, it does protect the end of the PTO shaft/splines from damage.