 Welcome to our Farm Safety video series. It's going to talk about the rules of the road as it relates to farm equipment and other pedestrians on the public roads. I'm going to give you some examples of what has happened to me in my life as it relates to farm accidents on public roads as well as talk about what some of the rules are of residing in North Dakota or to use public roads in general. When I was about 16 years old one of the things my dad always did is that we were expected to have a part in the farm operation and we were driving tractors at a very young age and we were moving farm equipment and hay bales up and down public roads and one of the things my dad always taught me is that you know what you're going to be seeing in front of you when you're operating your farm equipment but you're operating equipment that's probably too wide to where you can't see what's happening behind you. The first thing that he did is that we were hauling hay and I had a wide load of hay on the back of my tractor and my dad told me to pull off into the lane of the other lane so nobody could pass me and in this particular case I was all the way into the left lane because I could see there was no traffic coming from the other end and I was about ready to turn off onto my approach and I realized that somebody had decided to pass me and actually had stuck the side of their car into my stack mover because they hadn't either a choice either to dump their vehicle down into the ditch or to try to push me over. This is one thing I want to be very clear is that we are not able to take our equipment into the lane that is not designated for the direction that we're traveling. The proper way to make a turn when using farm equipment to make a go on to another approach is to pull off into your lane and then bring your tractor back without crossing the center line until your mirrors or you have visibility to see if there is a car or somebody behind you. Your lane needs to be followed throughout any of your driving experiences. This kind of goes into play with some other things about rules of the road as well is that you can't have another accident that happened to me was I was driving down a road with my tractor unaware of what was happening behind the baler and all of a sudden the car had hit me and it kind of jolted me and it sent me flying into the ditch and this kind of brings up the point too is that we do live in an agricultural state but we also realize that we are not the only ones on public roads. The people that are operating cars and pickups and trucks and motorcycles whatever it might be have to follow the same set of guidelines and understand that farm equipment is part of living on public roads. We are going to be driving at probably somewhere of 25 miles an hour or less and so the time that it takes for a car to come up and actually hit farm equipment it does not take very long at all so one of the things we would like people to follow is the five second rule. Normally if you are following one car to the next car they say there is a three second rule so you find a spot on the road and then you determine how long it takes for you to get to that point but with farm equipment because they are moving so much slower we want there to be five seconds from the time that you can find that point of where the back of that farm equipment is at until your vehicle actually gets there. There are signals on most farm equipment the hazard lights that will be on the tractors they are going to have lights here the slow moving vehicle sign is going to be on the back of the last piece of equipment of any farm machinery and hydrous tanks, balers whatever it might be that is traveling down the road. Now you don't have to have flashers on your tractor if they are equipped with flashers it is advisable to have them on but we do need to have the slow moving vehicle sign on that last piece of equipment that is an indication that farm equipment is traveling at less than 25 miles per hour. Another thing to keep in mind is that as we go down the roads we are going to be dealing with some farm equipment that might be larger than what the 8 foot 6 inch width of our roads are. So we get into these farm equipment like cowmines we are, everybody has probably seen them on a road some of them even drive with their headers on and so they are taking up well more than what that 8 foot 6 inch width is. In this particular case again the same rules apply is that you need to stay within your lane and then if you are going to run with larger equipment there are times that there might be an obstruction in the road such as a sign and then farmers are going to be needing to come around those signs and they are going to be taking up both lanes of the highway. In North Dakota and many other states as well is that as soon as you decide to cross the center line rules are going to change from the standpoint that you are going to assume responsibility of what is going to happen in this lane. Now if a farmer is going to, or if an automobile driver is going to decide to pass and they come up and they hit the front of that farm equipment they are responsible for that but if the farmer is all the way into this lane they have to understand what is happening with the other automobile drivers. Now this becomes a whole different issue of really who caused the accident and so you need to be aware of that. Some other things that do happen is we realize that we have got mirrors that we can see a lot of what is happening in front or behind us with this farm equipment and we need to educate our people on how to use that. Another thing we wanted to keep in mind during this farm safety series is that if you are going to hire youth and we are talking kids under the age of 16 years of age they do need to have a farm safety certificate to be able to operate farm equipment for hire. Some other things to keep in mind is that even if you are hiring foreign labor or somebody who is unfamiliar with your equipment it is always in the best interest of the farmer to educate that producer or that operator on the safety factors that go along with that farm equipment. Get them familiar with what the colors are that are going to be in farm equipment. Yellow is going to indicate that it is a PTO. The orange is going to indicate accelerators like your hand throttles or your foot throttles. Red is always stopping those types of things. But get them familiar with their pieces of farm equipment. Any time that you are going to hire foreign labor again just go through the work and protection standards and educate them on how to safely operate all farm equipment. There is a lot of moving parts on these machines. They are big. They are probably going to, you know, count binds or tractors. You can easily be running into a quarter to a half million dollar piece of machinery and the people that own that equipment would love you to take good care of that. So as you get out on public roads make sure that you practice proper safety maneuvers and then we really encourage you to understand the rules of the road both as an automobile driver and as farm operators as well. We encourage you to have a successful successful season as we get into planting and harvesting season and take care of yourself. We need every farmer we can get.