VIDEO: Sharing The Roads With Farmers To Prevent Accidents

MONROE COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI)-Farm equipment on the roads can be a point of frustration for drivers.

At some point, we’ve all been behind plows and tractors. Even though we might not like it, they do have a right to be there.

With planting season in full swing, expect to see farming equipment out on the roads more often.

“Today you have to have about a 1,000 or 1,500 acres to make it in agriculture, so they have to travel quite a distance,” said retired farmer Bo Robinson.

Robinson was in the agriculture business for over 40 years and knows all about driving tractors on the highways.

“Today its a lot less accidents probably than it was a few years ago, but there’s so much more traffic today than it was a few years ago,” said Robinson.

That heavy traffic can sometimes cause accidents involving the farming equipment.

“It’s pretty common in our county, we have a lot of farmers here,” sand Monroe County Sheriff Cecil Cantrell.

Cantrell said he’s been called out to many scenes where a piece of farming equipment was involved in an accident.

“People are always in a hurry,” the Sheriff said. “They’re not paying attention. They’ll run 55, 60, 70 miles an hour out here on the four-lane and they’re just not expecting a tractor, or whatever trailer, or whatever it is they’re pulling to be out there on the road. You go from 60, to what, 20 miles an hour, or 30 at the most, and it’s just so unexpected.”

Many farmers use the roadways to travel back and forth from their farms.

Although the tractors and trailers drive at a slower pace, Cantrell said drivers should still take precaution when they see them out on the roads.

Reflectors and multiple flashing lights can be seen on the equipment to make it visible to to other drivers.

“What they need to do is learn how to share the roadways because everybody has to go somewhere, and when they’re moving their tractors or equipment to different fields they’ve got to use the roadway,” said Cantrell.

“In fact, I passed a piece of equipment on the way down here and it had the flashers on it going,” said Robinson. “There’s no excuse to hit that if you’re paying attention and you’re driving within a reasonable speed.”