On April 14th, Juniata FFA took a trip to Ray Geissinger Farms to learn about Rural Road Safety. Our tour guide, Ray Geissinger, showed us around his farm and the different equipment he and his workers drive on roads. Ray showed us how there are different situations where there have been accidents with farm equipment because of people speeding or reckless driving, when it could’ve been avoided. Ray described to us how with bigger trucks, they need more time to turn or get up to speed, and this is involved with almost any farm equipment.
After the farm equipment demonstrations, Officer Chris Fox gave us a presentation to further explain rural road safety. Officer Fox told us about farm tags, the farm equipment safety symbol (the Fanny flag), reactionary gaps between vehicles, and other important information. He then gave us examples with different situations, whether with farm vehicles or every-day vehicles, to explain to us what to do in certain situations.
Chad Weaver then spoke about driving on the road and his experiences with farm equipment on the road.
Later on, Chaz Sheaffer, from NationWide Insurance came to talk about insurance with vehicles on and off the farm. He also mentioned different instances where he has had to deal with farm-related wrecks about different things like left turn crashes, getting overturned on ground that’s not level, and paperwork dealing with having the right information to deal with wrecks.
This entire trip was an educational day to help people realize what to do and how to prevent farm vehicle accidents. We encourage you guys to come to an event and see how FFA is in our school!