Harvest road safety initiative for regional drivers released

A road safety initiative is being rolled out for the upcoming summer harvest period to improve regional road sharing between agricultural vehicles and other road users.

The National Farmers’ Federations’ (NFF) ‘Common Roads, Common Sense’ campaign aims to deliver an educational message through a national series of radio, online and video clips targeting regional road users.

A three-step process aims to guide driver behaviour by encouraging motorists to “look out, slow down and take care”.

It is funded by $250,000 from the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator’s Heavy Vehicle Safety initiative and is supported by the Federal Government.

Acting Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development Michael McCormack said the initiative was moving ahead just as harvesters, trucks and other large farm machinery are starting to use regional roads more frequently.

“The aim of this campaign is to ensure other road users in regional areas are more aware of how to best respond to large agricultural machinery, when sharing the roads,” Mr McCormack said.

“The safe and efficient movement of large farm machinery on public roads provides multiple benefits, including helping to safeguard an essential operational component of Australia’s agricultural sector.

“This will assist all road users and ensure our hard-working farmers can get on with the job of being the world’s best food and fibre producers,” he said.

NFF CEO Tony Mahar said the new campaign was symbolised by the ‘fingers off the steering wheel country wave’ which is used by regional drivers to acknowledge the presence of other road users.

“Large machinery is also critical to keeping farmers moving with 93 per cent of Australia’s food supply grown here on home shores,” Mr Mahar said.

“Farmers take their responsibility to keep our communities safe very seriously and recognise moving large machines like tractors and harvesters can cause some inconvenience for other drivers.

“We’ll always move out of the way in these vehicles where we can, but we want to work as a team with other road users to use common sense when we do need to interact.”