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Bit of a dispute going on in our village between farm contractor and locals on Facebook
The local road speed limit is 30mph but people perceive that they are travelling faster than that with fully laden 16t trailers.
Are tractors top speeds supposed to be limited? I’ve read a 2015 parliament document saying they are limited to 20mph, but I doubt that’s current.
Contractor says that the Tractors (John Deere) are limited to 31mph.
Anyone know the rules?
Ta
There are a couple of new John Deere's capable/limited to of 31mph
JCB Fast Trac flies, could be getting up to 40ish
Aye, it's all about perception, tractor with a loaded trailer doing 30 looks like it's flying.
Just because the limit is 30, doesn't mean they need to do 30, stopping distance with a 16t trailer would be interesting.
My Tractor will do approx 33 mph or 54k, the law says I can go 40k, I usually go flat out on a duel carriageway or decent A road but well below 40k on back roads you just need to not be a dick like every other form of transport, Up until recently we could only do 20mph legally a law that was based on 1960s tractor technology. Like an ebike it would be possible on many modern tractors to make them go faster than the restricted speed as they are designed to reach max speed at reduced engine revs but manufacturers try to make it very hard to do that now.
Thanks for the responses. I think this is very true
it’s all about perception, tractor with a loaded trailer doing 30 looks like it’s flying.
It’s a road only just wide enough for a car to squeeze past a tractor coming the other direction.
So a tractor doing 31mph will appear to be going faster than it is. Still it looks like it should only be doing 25mph max.
We have tractors going past the house quite regularly and it does feel like they're shifting, but it's just perception.
Maybe try downloading a speed gun app?
Does the driver swear a lot?
The contractor came back saying that his tractors always stick to max permitted speed limits of 30mph
He hasn’t responded when I and others have posted that he shouldn’t be going over 25mph.
Could get arsey too and measure some of the trailers which I think exceed 2.55m
weird how tractors, which are massive, can look to be going dangerously fast through villages while bikes, which are small, suffer from the same phenomenon. Cars remain invisible, however
🙁
30 mph in a tractor with a loaded trailer is pretty bloody fast! Even at 25 I'd not want to meet one coming the opposite direction with limited visibility. It's a limit not a target!
Thinking outside the box a bit, maybe the village should be pushing for a blanket speed reduction to 20 mph, makes very little difference to journey times in the real world, but a big improvement in safety terms. You'd probably find a lot of the people moaning about the tractor speed would resist about the impact on their driving though.
(No, I can't back that last assertion with figures, but more reaction time before and incident and less energy to absorb if there is a crash)