This isn’t a topic that I thought much about in my old life if I’m being completely honest. It never crossed my mind that there were people, many people, that didn’t know how to be around farm equipment, let alone share the road with farmers and their equipment. Farm equipment is big and can be scary if you are not used to it.
Consequences of Not Sharing the road.
John was driving a tractor with attached equipment down a well-traveled flat road, it was a beautiful sunny June afternoon when he was killed. A car traveling at 59 miles an hour didn’t see him until one second before impact. The driver was on her phone. A tractor isn’t small, it should have been able to seen.
I remember one other incident about a month or so before his fatal crash that a school bus had passed John so closely that his hat flew off. It was on a different road, and he only lost his hat not his life but that was my first awakening of how dangerous moving equipment had become. How few people knew or followed the rules on sharing the road with farmers.
In the months and weeks afterward I heard about farmers that have had so many close calls. Cars, Trucks, Semis, that pass in no-passing zones and unsafe situations or that aren’t paying attention to anything that is happening around them
How to Share the Road
Tractors and their equipment take up a lot of space on the road. They are large and slow. They are required to have a slow-moving vehicle sign on the back at night but not during the days. Many tractors have extra lights to catch the attention of passing motorists. Sometimes they even have an extra car following behind with their hazards on to grab motorists’ attention a moment or two earlier. Farmers are doing their part.
I worked with a local FFA (Future Farmers of America) advisor, Sarah Heilers, to come up with this list. We wanted to keep it as simple as possible, easy to remember when you are on the road.
Tips for Sharing the Road with Farm Equipment
- Eyes Up. Phone Down.
- Slow down and be patient.
- Don’t assume the farmer sees you.
- Yield to wide equipment and let them pull over to pass.
- Watch for wide turns.
The biggest take away from all of these is to give farmers space. They are turning both onto roads and fields. They take up large portions of the roadways, pull into a driveway to let them through.
Share the Road Campaign
In the Fall of 2020, in conjunction with the Shelby County Farm Bureau, we launched the Share the Road Campaign. Through the support of dozens of local businesses, we were able to set a portable billboard at the site of John’s crash and distribute hundreds of yard signs throughout the surrounding area. We hope that seeing our signs will be a consistent reminder that is needed to help keep our farmers safe. Please help, do your part in sharing the road with farmers.
In the Blink of a Fly is led by Leah Fullenkamp. Leah is the mother of four young children. Their lives were tragically altered after a crash caused by distracted driving killed her husband and her children’s father. This website is the tale of them learning to live again and serves as a passion project to help prevent distracted driving and this tragedy from happening to someone else.
