Taking extra time helps avoid accidents during harvest season

Aug 20, 2023

JAMESTOWN — Avoiding accidents during harvest season comes down to being patient and taking extra time to ensure safety, according to Sgt. Evan Savageau with the North Dakota Highway Patrol.

“We want everybody to be safe and enjoy a really nice harvest season that’s coming up,” he said.

Savageau said common accidents that law enforcement see during harvest season include motorists rear-ending farm equipment and motorists not giving themselves sufficient distance to pass the machinery. He said motorists sometimes misjudge how slow the farm equipment is moving, causing the vehicle to rear-end the farm equipment. When trying to pass farm machinery, he said motorists should have at least 1,500 feet of distance to make a safe pass.

He said when larger farm machinery is approaching motorists on narrower roads, drivers should pull their vehicle into an approach, if one is nearby, to let the equipment go by.

“It takes you an extra minute or two and that thing clears past you and then you can safely travel down the roadway,” Savageau said. “It’s just asking drivers to essentially be patient and be observant about what is moving around in their area that they are traveling in.”

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With school being back in session, he said there will be more younger drivers on the roadways who don’t have much experience driving. He said law enforcement just wants those young drivers to pay attention to their surroundings and not be distracted.

He said motorists need to stay off their phones while driving. He said distracted driving is a major factor of motorists not being able to react appropriately.

“Being distracted is going to put you in a situation that’s extremely hazardous for yourself and that other person,” he said.

Savageau said farm equipment operators need to also pay attention and not get distracted because the machinery is moving much slower compared to the traffic.

He said farmers understand the lighting and reflective requirements on their machinery and should take extra time to wipe the dust or mud off their lights and reflective tape.

“It takes us an extra minute or two at most,” Savageau said. “That way you can be seen as much as possible at these times when we are having to move pieces of equipment from field to field and we are going to be on the roadway.”

Farm equipment operators should also take extra precautions when approaching rural railroad crossings. Savageau said rural railroad crossings don’t have cross-arms to warn operators or motorists of an approaching train.

“We just ask some of our farm equipment operators that as we are approaching, we slow down, we really make sure we are looking both directions because this vehicle that you are operating isn’t able to stop or accelerate as a normal motor vehicle,” he said. “ Taking that extra few minutes to really make sure it’s safe for you to enter and cross that railroad grade crossing is imperative. A lot of times it (preventing accidents with trains) just comes down to the fact where maybe it’s noisy, we aren’t paying attention, we didn’t hear a whistle or we didn’t try to check both directions twice to be able to safely make this movement.”

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Semitrailer drivers should be aware that the extra weight they are hauling will affect the acceleration and braking distance, Savageau said. He said more following distance for semitrailer drivers will allow them to read and react to make a proper movement if something happens in front of them.

Over the years, he said law enforcement has seen semitrailers going into a field take a turn too fast and roll because the driver didn’t compensate for the extra weight being hauled.

“The other side too, obviously we are having semis with larger trailers that are hauling grain or corn, product from the field and they are entering the roadway from the field,” he said. “Give yourself enough time to be able to pull out and make that turn and gain some speed and not put yourself in a position where traffic is approaching and we didn’t leave a sufficient time and distance for us to make a safe movement.”

Savageau said law enforcement has seen more UTVs and ATVs. He said UTVs might seem like a smaller vehicle but they don’t have the safety features that are in motor vehicles such as airbags, side-curtain airbags and advanced warning systems.

He said seat belts should be used in UTVS and helmets are recommended when operating ATVs.

Savageau said law enforcement tells people driving ATVs or UTVs to take extra time to make sure an intersection is clear before entering it. He also said ATVs and UTVs can sometimes be driven in areas not on the roadway.

“If I can ride down in the ditch line, great,” he said. “That probably alleviates a couple of situations for you where we aren’t out into traffic.”

Savageau added that UTV and ATV operators should not engage in risky behaviors that come with driving the off-highway vehicles even though they are fun to operate.

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UTV and ATV operators should drive at a safe speed, said Ashley Wolff, agriculture and natural resources extension agent for Stutsman County. She said some terrain might be unfamiliar or the operators might not be aware of the holes in the ground.

Savageau said consuming alcohol or drugs reduces motorists’ reaction time, judgment and opportunities to be conscious about their surroundings.

“When you place an impaired person especially underneath alcohol or drugs behind the wheel of very large heavy machinery that’s moving slower than traffic around you … it creates a significant hazard to the motoring public and a significant hazard to that person who’s operating that machinery,” he said. “ … It just poses such a hazardous risk to the public and themselves when that happens.”

Savageau said law enforcement has made significant efforts in the last 15 years to educate people about the dangers of impaired driving.

“I believe people are getting more and more educated about it,” he said.

Farmers need to take extra time and precautions to avoid other farm-related accidents, Wolff said.

Wolff said power take-off accidents happen when farmers are in a rush. PTO accidents happen when clothing or limbs get entangled in a rotating PTO.

“I have heard of PTO accidents in maybe the last year where somebody was maybe helping to hook up a trailer or a piece of equipment and the PTO was engaged and the person wasn’t realizing the person was back there, that sort of thing,” she said. “It’s just being aware of the surroundings and who’s helping you and where that person is at is really important to help prevent any of those injuries.”

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To prevent PTO accidents, individuals should step away from the machinery once their job is done and let the operator finish what they are doing, Wolff said.

“If they have questions or need help, that’s where the person on the ground also has to be responsible to make sure that something like that PTO is disengaged before approaching,” he said. “ … The person on the ground has to be just as responsible as the person on the tractor and being knowledgeable enough to be around that sort of equipment to know where they need to stand or how far back or things like that.”

She said the equipment operator needs to be aware of where other workers are at. Operators should also make sure other workers know where to stand to prevent farm-related accidents.

With semitrailers, she said drivers need to be aware of children or animals getting in the way. She said the drivers can’t see over the hood of the semitrailer.

Wolff said fatigue, heat stress and rushing contribute to accidents. She said fatigue causes farmers to be less cognizant of their surroundings and to not be as mentally sharp. She said many accidents happen because farmers are in a rush.

“Fatigue, heat stress, rushing, that’s when a lot of people just start running around and forget about these things that make sense to them and are pretty common to them,” she said. “That’s when they start to forget about some of those things and just kind of take some shortcuts and then accidents happen.”

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