Laws concerning minors and agricultural vehicles are outdated and out of step with the 21st century. A good friend (who is not of farming stock) telephoned me last week to ask for clarity over the age laws for driving tractors. He had been on his holidays in rural Britain (I won’t be specific but it was near Taunton) when someone pulled out in a tractor in front of his car.
As he explained it to me: "He looked about 12, could only just see over the steering wheel and was in charge of a massive dark green tractor with a spikey thing on the back. Even worse, the kid was on his flippin’ mobile."
I explained that you can take a tractor test at 16 and how I had enjoyed that perk of the job in my youth. But my youth was rather a long time ago, so I did a bit of research to find out what constitutes a "massive" tractor and what a 16-year-old is legally allowed to commandeer on the highways and byways.
I can see my friend’s point. Farm machines have changed beyond all recognition since I took my test on a David Brown 990 in 1985 and the laws either need updating or, better still, rewriting.
As long as your tractor is no wider than 2.45m and the axles on your trailer no further than 840mm apart, you can pass your tractor test in the morning and be roaring along a dual carriageway in the afternoon hauling mountains of grain at speeds up to 40kph (probably 50kph if your tractor is capable, although this is illegal on UK roads).
Young farmers who have been driving tractors on farm tracks since they were old enough to reach the pedals (but obviously not before they were past their 13th birthday) would not welcome any change that delayed their freedom on the roads. But handing inexperienced drivers such responsibility is madness – and a reaction like the one expressed by my friend is understandable.
The NFU Mutual has countless claims for accidents involving rookie category F (agricultural vehicle) licence holders. Travel bulletins are smattered with tales of tractors and trailers shedding their loads, too often driven by inexperienced drivers.
It is difficult to defend a law that allows youths who aren’t old enough to have a pint in a pub loose on the road without so much as a lesson. At the very least, passenger seats should be used so that 16-year-olds can have supervised lessons before they can take a test.
A more draconian suggestion would be to defer category F applications until their 18th birthday, ensuring that the individual had prior road experience.
The same "out of date" criticism can be said of the age restriction for children travelling in tractors.
The rule preventing under-13s travelling in tractors was written in days of yore when cabs and doors were a novelty on such vehicles. Devastatingly, it was not uncommon for children to fall off the mudguards on which they were perched.
It must be safer for children to sit in the confines of a cab rather than on the ground obscured from view.
The passenger seats in tractors and combines are the perfect setting for a bit of fatherly bonding, touting the merits of a career in farming (I speak as a father who sees precious little of his children during harvest).
Tractors have been updated beyond all recognition in the past 30 years and it is high time the laws governing their use were as well.