Pack Your Patience

As a youth, it was common each spring for my mother to recite this humorous limerick:

“Spring has sprung,
The grass has ris,
Where last year’s,
Careless drivers is.”

Although winter roads are associated with traffic accidents, spring is the season when slow moving farm equipment is likely to be sharing roadways with faster moving vehicles, at least vehicles whose drivers would like to be moving faster. It is a situation that can dramatically ruin someone’s day.

As a lifelong member of the agriculture community, I have experienced the loss of friends and neighbors whose equipment they were moving tangled with traffic. The statistics bear out the need for patience while traveling midwestern roadways during planting season. Statistically, some years prove more tragic than others. The year 2022 was a particularly dangerous year for farm equipment and the drivers around them on Indiana roads. In that year, 284 car accidents involving farm equipment resulted in 7 fatalities and 84 injuries.

The great majority of farm operators work to make travel safer for everyone in many ways. Josie Rudolphi, University of Illinois Extension, Agricultural & Biological Engineering Assistant Professor points out that it is a good idea to avoid moving equipment during peak traffic times. For example, shuffle equipment in the middle day to avoid people driving to and from work and school. Also, Rudolphi urges operators to use hazard lights and turn signals diligently.

The Great Planes Center for Agricultural Health compared nine states’ policies on lighting and marking farm equipment with standards offered by the American Society for Agricultural and Biological Engineers (http://www.asabe.org/). The ASABE generated scores to show the extent to which each state’s farm equipment lighting policies complied with ASABE standards. It was no surprise that the most compliant state (Illinois) had 70% fewer farm equipment incidences on roadways than the least compliant state (Missouri).

Indiana was not a part of the nine-state comparison. However, in Indiana a Slow-Moving Vehicle, SMV, sign is required on all vehicles traveling less than 25 miles per hour. SMV signs should be easily recognizable by their bright orange triangle trimmed with red reflective tape configuration. The emblem is required by law on all tractors, combines, and other farm equipment.

Transportation incidents, including tractor overturns, are the leading work-related cause of death for farmworkers, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Still, equipment operators do not want to hold up traffic or cause inconvenience to motorists any more than motorists want to be inconvenienced. After all, Producers and motorists each just want to go to work, go home, and safely get through the day.

Farmers will pull off the road to allow motorists to pass when it is safe for them to do so, but they cannot always move aside immediately since it can be a hazardous maneuver. Unpaved road shoulders can be soft, wet, rutted, or steep, which can cause farm vehicles to tip over. It is good to remember that modern farm equipment is not only wide, but very tall as well, and heavy. Consequentially, operators cannot and should not pull off a roadway just anyplace.

The following list includes several thoughts for motorists approaching large farm equipment from the Indiana State Department of Agriculture:

Farmers will pull over when they are able to let motorists pass, but it may take time for them to get to a safe place to do so.

Do not pass in a designated “No Passing Zone” or within 100 feet of any intersection, railroad grade crossing, bridge, elevation structure or tunnel. Wide farm equipment is difficult enough to see around. “No Passing Zone(s)” are marked to help drivers know what they cannot see.

Do not try to pass slow-moving farm equipment on the left without ensuring that the farmer driving is not planning a left turn. Long and wide pulled farm equipment may require the driver to swing right to clear obstacles in a LEFT turn. It may appear that the driver is pulling over to allow a pass when the farmer is actually preparing to turn.

Allow plenty of time to get to a destination; be aware of alternate routes and avoid distractions.

Modern farm equipment is often wider than a traffic lane, particularly on bridges and raised roadways. Approaching traffic should be prepared to allow wide equipment to pass.

Pack your patience.