As harvest season gets underway for farmers, more oversized machinery will be out on the roads in the grain growing regions of western Australia and heavy vehicle drivers in the Great Southern warn that impatient road users often put lives at risk while overtaking slow moving machines.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Rob Mitchell's office is hard to miss.
00:05I'm driving a self-propelled boom spray, it's 3.2 metres wide, 4 metres high off the ground.
00:10The spraying contractor travels along main roads from farm to farm.
00:15I'm maximum doing 50 kilometres an hour, yeah, people just don't seem to have enough patience.
00:22It's this lack of tolerance from road users that could have ended in tragedy.
00:27Down a road, a school bus full of kids decided that me turning my indicator on to turn right
00:31was the signal to overtake me.
00:33A mate of mine's young fella was on the bus and blew the wind up me a bit.
00:36The most recent near miss prompted Rob to speak up about the dangers of drivers using
00:41their right flicker as an indicator to overtake their trucks or caravans.
00:47The headline won't read school bus hits sprayer, it'll be sprayer hits school bus and that's
00:54not good for anyone.
00:56The trucking industry is also raising the alarm.
01:00We don't know your ability is the main thing, that's the problem.
01:03What's causing confusion is when heavy vehicles are turning, motorists take their flicker
01:09as an indication to overtake.
01:11As a nation and as a society we actually like to help people and we think we're helping
01:15and it's not.
01:16It's a really, really, really bad habit.
01:18Police are also on the lookout and are pleading for caution.
01:22In good faith, if they do indicate right to tell the person behind, that can create
01:28an unsafe overtaking manoeuvre.
01:30The person behind should only overtake when they actually assess what's in front of them
01:35and they deem it safe that they can go through.
01:37With harvest beginning for some, more and more oversized vehicles like this one behind
01:42me are going to be out on our roads.
01:44That's why operators like Rob and Glenn are asking for people to slow down and be more
01:50patient.
01:52For more UN videos visit www.un.org