Sharing the road

Dear Editor:

Living in the country comes with the benefit that we can enjoy the farms around us, and that our children have been able to find work at local farms.

Even when many activities were closed down over the last months, many students were able to continue to get work experience, grow in responsibility and learn how to care for animals and crops in our rural farm community. We’re grateful for this.

It concerns us to see the behaviour in traffic on our roads now that many farmers are busy with the harvest. We need to remind ourselves that we share highways and gravel roads with people who are doing their daily job and are under a lot of pressure this time of the year. Harvesting takes a lot of planning, ever depending on the weather, and involves long days requiring hours of constant focus operating large tractors, combines and wagons with heavy loads.

Farmers have the responsibility to check their equipment, lights and signs, and obey the traffic rules of course. However, they drive heavy pieces of machinery, fully loaded, and just like tractor trailers, they can not come to a quick stop or manoeuvre out of the way.

Careless passing or impatient behaviour by drivers can create unnecessary dangerous situations. Accidents often happen when tractors slow down to make a turn and people quickly try to pass on either side. In case of an accident, the fault often lands with the tractor operator unfortunately. We have seen the anxiety these unnecessary encounters cause to farm families during an already challenging time of year.

In Europe many tractors are now outfitted with special bumpers at the front to minimize impact and avoid cars, bikers or pedestrians ending up under the tires in case of a collision. We hope that is not necessary here in Ontario and urge everyone to respect our farmers and give them lots of space on the roads.

Lars and Ilse VanderMeulen,
Arthur