Hear is a Bad Unit

[DrainPondDesign]

Wide load haying equipment at 45 mph on a back road should be interesting to encounter, especially if you are driving in the opposite direction. Some farmers from VT while driving haying equipment to "their other" field in NY forced a VFD truck off the road last fall & the police wrote them up for a number of violations.

My tractor in NY is insured under my home owner's policy which does not cover public road use, for that I would need full vehicle insurance on it. That Fendt looks like a lot of money to lose in an accident or to have held as evidence in a fatal.

 

[Lynkage]

I think it is a NEET tractor. I certainly like to drive one of those monsters!!

 

[Timber]

I have towed many a tractor trailer that was in a major accident and cars that were hit by them. Semi's have bumpers for a reason, it makes them safer. If one of those farm tractors hit a vehicle it would go over it because there is nothing low to the ground to prevent it from doing so. A semi with a bumper will crush a car or truck and a great deal of the impact is absorbed by this crush effect. This is the reason vehicles are designed with crumple zones in the frame. They are designed to absorb impact. Many new tractor trailers are also starting to incorporate crumple zones in the front of the frame rails just for this reason.

I am not disagreeing with you on the point that this machine would require some additional features to operate in this country. The addition of a front bumper is a very simple thing on this unit especially with a front mounted 3 point hitch. Even on a big truck the front bumper is between the front wheels. There is no support to the plastic wings in front of the wheels if it even has them. Look somebody spent a lot of time and money designing this thing to operate on a public access. This is a super tractor. It really is a different animal all together. In the United States the DOT controls what can and can not be operated. Further more this vehicle utilized air breaking technology. That alone requires a CDL. I think if you read the Bio on this unit that everything was covered in the design. The lack of a front bumper in the demo doesn't mean much when you take into consideration it is on the world market and not the US exclusively. Regardless of your personal opinion the safety laws in the US are not shared world wide.

 

[Turbys_1700]

I gotta agree with DieselPower. Those speeds are excessive. Last year my 75 year old dad was driving his 89 class 8 Volvo back home with a repaired 160 AC. A 19 year old boy fell asleep at the wheel and hit my father head on. My dad had locked down the brakes and slowed down to approximatley 20 MPH when the 92 blazer hit him @ 45 MPH. The young man was killed on contact and the 89 Volvo was totaled. My father had a hard time dealing with it. It was no fault of his and he was not ticketed. The boys dad called my father and told him that their was no hard feelings and that it was no fault of his.

So, in essence, it doesn't make a whole lot of difference in what you're driving. The big guy always wins. I gotta feel though that legislation will prevent those high speeds over here in the US if those tractors are imported here.

 

[DieselPower]

I am not disagreeing with you on the point that this machine would require some additional features to operate in this country. The addition of a front bumper is a very simple thing on this unit especially with a front mounted 3 point hitch. Even on a big truck the front bumper is between the front wheels. There is no support to the plastic wings in front of the wheels if it even has them. Look somebody spent a lot of time and money designing this thing to operate on a public access. This is a super tractor. It really is a different animal all together. In the United States the DOT controls what can and can not be operated. Further more this vehicle utilized air breaking technology. That alone requires a CDL. I think if you read the Bio on this unit that everything was covered in the design. The lack of a front bumper in the demo doesn't mean much when you take into consideration it is on the world market and not the US exclusively. Regardless of your personal opinion the safety laws in the US are not shared world wide.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's one heck of a tractor with some great design features. My point is that it would need some more safety features in the US. Around here and I guess elsewhere in the US alot of farmers use outside contractors for field spraying. In my area Southern States is big into it. Most of them either use Terigator (purpose built field spraying units) or modified International 4700 truck chassis's. The modified Internationals are just a bare bones truck with very large flotation tires installed, about 3 1/2 feet tall in the front and 5 - 5 1/2 feet tall in the back. The Terigators don't go much above 25MPH while the modified trucks will go much faster. The tires on both of these vehicles are rated at a safe operating speed of 25MPH. For years I would see the Internationals flying up and down Rt.140 in MD doing 45MPH or more until one day, one was in a accident and killed a mother and her 2 children. It wasn't long after that that the State Police started pulling them over and giving them tickets. It's sad but it took the death of a family before someone did something about it.

 

[kozak]

Am I seeing things or is that a camoflauge paint job. Was expecting to see at least a couple gun torrents out the front. What gives ??

Vic

 

[patrick_g]

I guess I'm not much of a threat since even at full throttle down hill I don't exceed about 20 MPH. The psychological situation is reversed for me in my tractor on a public road. I have little or no concern for endangering someone else. Instead I worry about being run over by some idiot having lunch and talking on their cell phone at 75 in a 65 zone when I am only able to hit about 15 MPH. Flashing lights and a SMV sign only work if the other guy is paying attention to their driving and not primping in the mirror, digging around in the console for some CD, or whatever.

Pat

 

[Timber]

When I am going to my neighbors to do some work with the tractor I always have him follow me in his pickup. Massachusetts doesn't allow the tractor on the public access anyway. I do it anyway because thats the way I am

 

[rebuilder]

My point is that it would need some more safety features in the US.

I apologize up front, but this hits a nerve, so I'll say my peace and not respond any further.

It needs more safety features, why? Because German engineers are incompetent morons and only an American has any idea of what safety is?
Or maybe we just need a few more laws because we simply don't have enough yet.
In Europe, as someone else mentioned, tractors on the highway are common and people react accordingly. It seems we Americans have lost any sense of reacting accordingly, possibly because of all the laws and regulations "protecting" us.

I also have to say that I've responded to hundreds of motor vehicle accidents in more than 25 years as a firefighter/EMT. The accident pictured is not terribly messy by comparison to many I've worked. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that you can not predict the outcome when vehicle A hits vehicle B. I've seen fatalities where the only mechanical damage was a broken headlight. I've seen cars strewn across the highway (all four doors and the deck lid detached) and the driver is standing on the side of the rode with a cup of coffee watching us try to figure out where the body went and wondering why no one is asking him what happened (and he was stone cold sober). I'm willing to say that unless those tractor wheels got you just right, you'd come out of a drive over accident relatively ok, because the energy doesn't need to be absorbed. Likewise with roll-overs (so long as seat belts are worn). I've only seen one semi-serious injury when the car rolled. Why? The car dissipated it's energy into the ground over time. You wanna see dead in a hurry? Hit a tree. Maybe we should outlaw those.

I'll apologize again, just in case once wasn't enough.

 

[D7E]

Why are you blaming the machine , There are thousands of high speed tractors on the road in all countries and most meet legal requirements .
Very few get into accidents and when they do it's usually driver error so should'nt the focus be on driver instruction ( Class 1 license ).