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On Thursday, 14 February 2019 09:25:49 UTC, NY wrote:

I wish the law would be changed to say that tractors are only allowed on
the
road for short journeys between one field and another of a farm, and that
for all longer-distance journeys trailers had to be hauled by a lorry
that
was capable of reaching the speed limit, rather than a tractor with (at
best) a top speed of 30.

There's already a law to deal with it. Adding another is not the solution.

What exactly *is* the law about using tractors for long-distance haulage (eg
from field to processing plant or remote barn) instead of using a road-going
lorry and road-going trailer?

Am I right, incidentally, that all trailers used on the road must have
proper rear lights (tail/indicator) and number plate? Or is an exception
made for tractors to allow for a fleet of tractors being used with the same
trailer and to avoid having to connect/disconnect cables each time the
tractor/trailer are uncoupled?

The problem has got worse now that farmers have fields in various places
which are many miles from the storage barn, rather than the barn being
adjacent to the fields where crops were grown, as happened in the past.

The farmer that grew barley/wheat in the fields behind our old house had a
fleet of tractors and grain trailers taking the outflow from the combine
harvester to his "base" which was probably about 10 miles away along fairly
narrow roads.

Is there any legal requirement for drivers of slow-moving vehicles (for some
definition of "slow") to pull over whenever possible to let traffic past? Or
is it just a strongly-worded recommendation in the Highway Code, without any
legal "teeth" behind it and which is at the discretion and bloody-mindedness
of the driver? My wife used to work on a farm in the 1990s and it was
drummed into them that they *must* be courteous to other drivers and pull in
whenever they could.

Around York there used to be horrendous problems at sugar-beet times when
farmers would use their own tractors to take their trailers of sugar beet to
the central processing plant (now closed down) on the outskirts of York,
causing big traffic holdups. I wonder if the same problem happens/happened
at the one in Newark that we sometimes drive past.

Obviously tractors are not allowed on motorways, but you still get them on
motorway-standard dual carriageways - and huge queues as everyone has to get
over into the other lane to get past a tractor trundling along at 20 on a
road where most traffic is doing 70 (or maybe a bit more if the police
aren't checking).