In the midst of harvest season, while some crops like wheat and rice are nearly completely harvested, others, such as corn and soybeans, will be soon — no matter if your role is a producer driving a combine, a driver hauling grain to the local elevators, or a motorist on country roads surrounded by farmland. Safety needs to be kept in mind.

“All gets going. The days are getting shorter, so you’re going to see these big pieces of equipment out onto the roadway later into the evening. We’re getting darker earlier in the evening, so the chances that ag equipment is going to meet with the motoring public is pretty good this time of year,” Dan Neenan of the National Education Center for Agricultural Safety said.

Neenan said both farm equipment drivers and motorists need safety reminders when they are on the road this time of year.

“So left turns on the farmsteads is something that we need to talk about. Ag equipment will be making turns into farmsteads. Motoring public, you have to obey the law, and you can only pass farm equipment in passing zones. You can’t pass it in no-passing zones, but we see a lot of collisions that occur between the motoring public and the farming community when the tractors and the combines are turning left into farmsteads about the same time that the motoring public is trying to pass. So there needs to be that awareness out there and to share the road.”

Meanwhile, farmers need to make safety checks of machinery and have personal protection and safety equipment available prior to the start of harvest for the season.

“For each day, we always want to take a look at the fire extinguishers that are in the shed and then the combine. Are they charged? Are they ready to go? The first aid kits — do you have a farm first aid kit that’s stocked and ready to go?” Neenan said.

Neenan adds, if a grower’s area uses 911 signs for emergency notification:

“Have a notebook in every vehicle — combine, tractor, pickup truck, minivan — that might go from farmstead to farmstead, because farmers are now renting more property than ever before. That would have that 911 sign, so if you have an emergency, you can get that 911 sign and be able to give them that 911 number right away, which is going to tell the dispatcher what fire department, what ambulance, what law enforcement agency to be able to respond.”

And even though most cell phone customers pay a 911 fee that allows dispatchers to find GPS location:

“That takes time, and in an injury or in a cardiac event, time is muscle. So we need to shorten up that time from the time that we dial 911 till the time that we can get medical resources there to be able to help.”