Tractors should not be on main roads at peak commuter time. AIBU

[Hoolajerry]

We live in a relatively rural town which traditionally has a large farming community. We have very poor public transport links. We have one major road which bypasses the town and is approximately 30 minutes to a major motorway. Without fail whenever you travel on this road there are tractors. In the morning there can be significant tailbacks 20+ cars long. Unfortunately the road does not lend itself to overtaking (amongst one of the most dangerous in the country). It also does not have many pull-in places and even if they do you will meet another one fairly soon.
I had this conversation with DH and he said that as a rural community they have a right to be there whenever they like. However, these are not small business tractors as per traditional farms, they are massive contractors who have set-up in the last 10 years who are therefore based significant distances from the farms they serve. One in particular is very new and has bought up swathes of land throughout the locality and has its base 2 miles from the motorway but comes all the way to our town it what seems to be a constant stream.
I know that I am being slightly unreasonable so this is a little lighthearted but it pisses me off that everyday my journey to work is taken at a snails pace following bloody tractors. AIBU?

@LavendarGreen but I do regardless what method of transport I'm using.

It’s a busy time for farmers, I really don’t mind being stuck behind one, I live rurally. Most will pull over when convenient. They have a set number of hours they can work a day, because of the shorter days...have you seen how dark it is at 6 in the morning in the country? So I think expecting them to not travel during rush hour is a little unreasonable. Also, can’t remember where, but there was an article recently about the high number of suicides amongst farmers, they work long and lonely days, so I try to cut them a little slack.

YABVU.

Given the bulk of farmers work is done outside then rearranging their hours to fit in with impatient drivers really doesn’t work does it, especially not in winter months

YABU. Your work doesn't trump theirs. Don't live in the countryside if you want to avoid tractors. They are everywhere around where I live. Yes it's mildly irritating if you're in a hurry, but they have just as much right to be on the road as you do. If it happens regularly, leave earlier.

We live rurally and I don't mind it at all, I'd rather be sat behind a tractor than in a traffic jam in town.

Plus small child bloody love the things 😂

"seems to be a constant stream."

Sounds like it needs to be a constant stream. Like they couldn't get their business done if they were banned from roads at peak times.. what are peak commuter times, anyway? 7am-9am & 4-7pm? Ask your local farmers how that would work for them.

I'd like to ban speeding drivers. the ones who trigger all the !! signs as they enter villages. So that's 70% of drivers already off the roads.

Let's ban people who park up leaving car engine running and often no occupants. On pavement. At the corner shop or bus stop or train station. That's 1-5 vehicles I see on my 5 miles of cycle commuting, each morning.

Should ban aggressive drivers who overtake near bends or leave about a metre clearance with oncoming traffic.

And tailgators. They should go, too.

I reckon with those rules that's 85% of current drivers off the road. Now it will be easy to pass the tractors & cyclists. Sorted.

Showing your townie credentials op. School kids going two stops on buses gets me.

@Horehound

Anyone who chooses to live rural, (and has to occasionally get stuck behind farm vehicles,) has to suck it up. The OP (and people like her) need to grow up, and understand that life does not revolve around them and their work hours!

Also, not everyone works the same bloody hours FGS. So what do you suggest??? That the farm vehicles have wings put on them so they can fly, and not inconvenience ANYONE?

The OP, and you, (and people like you,) would be the first to moan if you didn't get any food because there were no farm vehicles allowed on the road anymore.

FFS, you can tell who the precious entitled snowflakes are on here. And they are DEFINITELY townies/city dwellers. Everyone born and raised in the countryside is laughing at you! (And so are quite a lot of people who moved to the countryside, but respect the way of life there, and the needs of the farmer/farm workers!)

Yanbu, I've never experienced a tractor, or any slow moving vehicle, pull over or let backed up cars pass. I don't even live that rurally but often get stuck behind tractors around peak times and it can add 10-30 minutes to a journey. Yes they have jobs to do, but do they need to be on the roads at peak times?

I would include anything large and slow moving and all cyclists who don't ride single file.

Oh dear you are slightly delayed by someone making a living who is fully legally using the road.

Hopefully you dont want to eat anything produced from the fields, and of course would never ask them for help when you stuff your car into a ditch on an icy road because you cant wait to overtake.....

Are you in Norfolk? They are buggers for it down there!

We are also semi rural and regularly have tractors etc clogging up the roads including rush hour. Luckily the bastards can't use the motorway.

Ah! I know you OP.

You're the wife if the bloke who spent hours on Facebook trying persuade a farming community that they were breaking all sorts life laws harvesting late into the night, using light racks.

He had bought a lovely big house on a new beautifully rural development. Great garden surrounded by nature... and crops.

The farmers had arranged to combine across the back of his house, rather than towards it. But that wasn't good enough, they needed to stop at 8pm.

Say they ignored him and worked round the clock as usual. He even got told to shut up about it in the pub, full of other people in similar developments.

It's called real life farming, supplying you with food. Just take a deep breath and drive carefully.

However much they are vital it is annoying, but one of those things. I leave for work 30 mins earlier just in case I get stuck behind one, in which case it's more annoying when I dont haha.

We are farmers. YABU. There are rules in place that mean combines can't be on the road at peak times and it is really inconvenient especially during a rainy harvest when you want to get fields cut ASAP and have to leave it sat on the yard for three hours waiting for rush hour to be over and then it starts raining. But combines are huge so that's fair enough. Christ, if tractors had the same rules it would be a nightmare. During harvest we will have up to four tractors with trailers travelling every 30 minutes or so between a field and the grain store. The combine would have to stop completely if the tractors couldn't transport the grain for a few hours in the morning and a few hours in the evening, and the weather is too unreliable in this country for those delays. We already work until midnight most nights. Even now, harvest is over, but drilling the new crops is still happening. Again, the weather has been so ropey that we've had farmers sat on tractors on the yard literally waiting for the moment the ground is dry enough to drill. Yesterday, they went out at 4pm and got a lot done. That's after around two weeks of being able to do nothing due to the rain. They'd be bloody pissed off if they had to wait till 7.30pm to avoid rush hour.

Curious we have a guy like that in our village. He's furious that we've sold off land for houses behind his house, yet every harvest without fail before this he would come out of his house and stand at the fence while we were combining to complain about the dust blowing into his garden. One year the combine driver hopped out and shouted 'it'll be great when this is concreted over for houses won't it!' and hopped back in. You could almost see steam coming out of his ears

YABU we live in a similar rural town and this always comes up around harvest time. You chose to live rurally. If you don't like waiting for tractors then live in a city. Tractors are part of rural life. Everyone hates traffic on their commute z(I regularly swear about lorries overtaking each other) but YABVU to expect tractors to work around rah hour; here that would be between 6:30-09:30 and 16:00-18:30!

Why do the vast majority of farmers vote Tory?

It's not tractor drivers that are being unreasonable though. Perhaps the council needs to widen roads. Or stay at home mums should take public transport or make their kids walk instead of driving them. Or you should set off earlier. We have tractors that routinely cause tailbacks on the A64 but I know when they set off now so I have just altered my timings to avoid them.

YABVU. I like the small pleasure of eating food a few times a day.

I blame Kellogg’s. Those crunchy nut cornflakes are so tasty I just have to have another bowl and I am invariably late, but thankfully there’s always a tractor to blame.

They always seem to ‘hog’ the road 😂

Sorry if I’m ‘going against the grain’ here 😂😂

Tractors are a pain on our major euroroute road, there are many pull offs which they are encouraged to use but I would say the majority don't. It's the road linking NIreland ferry with the rest of the world so full of lorries. Why should the tractors take priority?
And it's not usually Farmer Bill from down the road but a hugecontraption from a hire firm who are leased on contract by the farmers.
They just need to pull over more.

As long as I like eating food, I will not get exercised about tractors on country roads at harvest time.