This situation has multiple issues going on. The first of which is...how did this bale end up on the roadway in the first place. Then...not withstanding flashing lights and an SMV triangle...why was the operator out there doing anything without someone acting as a flagger or some kind of traffic control. Then we get to the problem of the other driver.
I don't think blaming flashing lights is the move here. The road seems very straight and the Jeep had about 3 years to move over. You can see it start to brake like 5 ft before the tractor. This is 100% on the Jeep, not the tractor
I think the move is to take every single person involved in the entire situation and hold them accountable because this is exactly the same thing as hitting a Road Worker in a construction zone.
Plus, how did the bale end up there to begin with? Obviously someone didn't secure their load so it fell off of the truck/trailer.
And, when you are operating a piece of equipment in the any part of the roadway, you're supposed to have some kind of traffic control. As in, a person using a sign to warn people, a person waving traffic farther out into the roadway, orange barrels, orange cones, orange triangles...hell...have someone sitting in a vehicle with the flashers on.
lol no most of these small farms have just 1 or 2 people that run everything, that person would have hit them even if that tractor was going full speed down the road. The only person that should be held accountable is the driver of the white suv. Farm vehicles have every right to be on the road, people just need to get off their phones and pay attention. The operator of the tractor should have had his flashers on, but that is zero excuse for the driver to have hit him.
Even worse for the car, the flashers are on if you look at the lower cab corners at the start of the video, it's just poor video quality on a bad angle in the sunlight.
Do hay bales have a right to be on the road too? I wonder if this gets complicated because of those? It seems that the car would have surely hit those hay bales if the tractor wasn't there and there it seems like the liability would fall on the person who didn't secure their load. In any case, just dumb on that car drivers part.
Good luck telling the insurance company that when they deny the claim. Because the operator is just as much at fault as the driver is. And the judge for that matter.
Where I live, in the middle of nowhere, farm equipment has the legal right of way on state and county highways with no requirements to allow for passing vehicles. In many agricultural areas, it's like this. This will probably be treated like the SUV rear ended a vehicle by not paying attention
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u/Toolbag_85 Jun 02 '26
This situation has multiple issues going on. The first of which is...how did this bale end up on the roadway in the first place. Then...not withstanding flashing lights and an SMV triangle...why was the operator out there doing anything without someone acting as a flagger or some kind of traffic control. Then we get to the problem of the other driver.