Summer may bring tractor collision risks
As West Country roads become busier with the harvest season approaching and tourists flocking to the South West for their summer holidays, drivers may more frequently find themselves held up in queues of traffic behind a tractor or slow moving agricultural vehicle and risk being involved in an accident.
"While it can be frustrating to have your journey delayed it isn’t worth risking causing an accident by attempting dangerous overtaking manoeuvres on narrow country roads" said insurance firm Cornish Mutual.
Research has previously found that motorists usually only have to travel between 1.2 and 3.1 miles behind a tractor, and that the delay will actually only add 1-2 per cent to the overall journey time.
The insurance firm is also warning tractor drivers that they could face penalties of up to 9 points on their driving licence and a £5,000 fine if they do not allow vehicles to pass as they are required to by law.
Section 3 of the Road Traffic Act (1988) states that slow moving vehicles must pull over when there is a safe opportunity to do so if they are being tailed by a long stream of cars.
Phil Wilson, Field Force Manager for Cornish Mutual said: “When you’re trying to get somewhere or are running late it’s easy to become frustrated and lose patience when you get stuck behind a tractor. We want to encourage drivers to keep calm and not attempt to overtake unless they are certain it is safe to do so - in most cases you won’t have to wait long for tractors to pull in or turn off the road and your journey will only be delayed by a few minutes at most.
“It’s really just about being considerate of other road users and it works both ways – if tractor drivers can see that a large queue of traffic is building behind them they should try to find somewhere safe to pull over and let cars pass, so that everyone’s journey is as stress-free as possible.”
While the law doesn’t specifically state how many vehicles must be following a slow moving vehicle or how far it must have travelled before having to pull over, drivers can be prosecuted under Section 3 of the Road Traffic Act (1988) for driving without reasonable consideration for other road users in extreme cases.
The recommendation to drivers from Devon and Cornwall Police is that common sense is used to judge whether or not you are obliged to stop.
Inspector Richard Pryce from the Devon and Cornwall Police Safer Roads Support Unit said: “Our advice to drivers of large, slow moving vehicles, including tractors, is that if you have six or more vehicles behind you then you should try to pull over whenever it is safe and appropriate to do so. Most farm workers in the West Country are considerate and will pull over anyway, but if a driver has a long trail of traffic behind them and ignores opportunities to let cars pass, we do have the power to prosecute proportionately to the offence. Drivers of other vehicles should also be considerate and keep in mind that particularly in rural counties like Devon and Cornwall agriculture is an important part of the economy and the tractor drivers are just trying to do their jobs.”
