Traffic Safety

[Music] Heat. Heat. Tractors such as this are essential to modern farming. Tractors are powerful. The power contained in the 5 million tractors in use throughout the United States helps provide you and me with one of the highest standards of living the world has ever known. Tractors are mobile power. They have to get around just about anywhere. Uphill and down in fields and on highways because they represent power on the move. Tractors can be dangerous. Claude D. St. pair safety coordinator for the American Farm Bureau Federation and chairman of the Farm Conference of the National Safety Council tells us more. This SMV emblem, slowmoving vehicle emblem, identifies this tractor as a vehicle on the highway traveling at 25 mph or less. It tells the oncoming motorist, the motorist approaching this tractor from the rear, slow down and proceed with caution. Tractors are slow, but they are powerful. The driver of a tractor must be alert at all times. Tractor power uncontrolled or misused can be a killer. A tractor can upset and crush its driver. That scene occurred at a farm equipment research facility with a dummy instead of a man in the driver's seat. Without protection, that man could be dead. There are nearly 1,000 tractor fatalities each year. In about 550 to 600 of these accidents, the driver or the passenger were killed in the tractor overturn. A protective frame could prevent this. This steel frame is designed to keep this tractor from overturning more than 90° in most situations. It provides a zone of safety should the tractor overturn more than 90°. The seat belt is designed to keep you within that zone. A protective frame or a cab with built-in roll protection and a seat belt can make the difference between life and death. Safety devices cost money, but a wise operator knows he can't afford not to have them. So he considers personal protection a normal part of his operating overhead. Come to think of it, this is overhead protection, too. [Music]