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LAST UPDATE | 26 May 2020
TIKTOK SAYS ITS safety team will carry out an investigation into videos showing members of the public dangerously using farm machinery to carry out stunts.
It came after the Irish Farmers’ Association criticised several videos showing what it described as “dangerous pranks” using machinery.
The group has collated a number of videos, including one of an individual standing on the draw-bar of a trailer while it is being driven on a public road.
Another video shows a man sitting on the bonnet of a tractor while it is cutting silage, and in another, two tractors can be seen trying to overtake each other on a road.
IFA president Tim Cullinan called on those recording the videos to show more responsibility and expressed concerns that such individuals are putting their own lives and the lives of other at risk.
“It needs to be stamped out immediately,” he told Morning Ireland on RTÉ Radio.
“I think anybody seen doing this or making those videos, I think it’s a sackable offence… it’s an absolutely crazy situation.”
He also pointed to the fact that eight farm fatalities had occurred already this year, and suggested that the videos would not go down well with the families of those who have died.
“If some of those people making those videos were to call to a house where there has been a bereavement from a farm accident, I’m telling you they would not be out making those videos again.”
In a statement, the IFA called on farmers and contractors to make it clear to employees that making such videos is a sackable offence.
“This has to be stamped out… the last thing we need now is something like this going on around the country,” Cullinan added.
Commenting on the videos after reports emerged this morning, Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed described their content as “alarmingly childish immature behaviour”.
“I see boys tasked with adult work clearly incapable of responsibility,” he tweeted.
“I’m sure their families will be mortified. They’re lucky that’s curable. Too many others are not so fortunate!”
With reporting from Press Association.
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Still mad that a 16 year old can legally drive a 35ton tractor and trailer down the road with no test or supervision.
@Eoin Scanlon:
Correct. Here’s another scenario. 3 kids probably 7 or 8 years old in “charge” of a 2 year old Piebald on a sulkie on a public road.
Figure that one out?
Common site around my locality
@Eoin Scanlon: I agree I need to re sit a driving test so I can pull a trailer with my van but anyone over 16 can drive these large farm machinery.
@Lotus: You mean a common halting site ?
@Barry Teehan:
Why do you say that?
@Eoin Scanlon: Is 35 tonne just a random number? That would be unusually heavy.
@Lotus: Because you can’t spell “sight” properly.
@Damien: It’s a large number and one that I’ve definitely seen hit on weigh bridges. I think 32t is the legal limit. But a 22 foot trailer of grain behind a 12t tractor would easily exceed it
@Lotus: just maybe because it’s a practice associated with people who frequently live in a Travellers Halting Site
@Lotus: amazing that our brave ministers went for the protection of circus animals and never bothered with the Silkie codology. Just shows their level of fear dealing with the issue
@Barry Teehan:
And between the article and the comments section, that’s what’s bothering you? My typing grammar?
Ooookaaaay!
@Lotus:
Same in my area. Gardai don’t want to know.
@Eoin Scanlon: My 16, nearly 17 year old son loves farming and farm machinery. I’d trust him to be safe more than I would trust some adults. He was mentored by a friend of mine who owns a farm and previously worked with extremely heavy machinery and explosives as a miner in excess of a decade. Simple mantra; take your time and do it right.
He’s that dangerous that farmers and contractors ring him to ask if he’d be able to give them a dig out.
Don’t tar every young lad with the same brush. There’s absolute bloody clowns out there but there’s some excellent young lads out there as well that I’d trust with €500k worth of machinery quicker than I’d trust most adults.
@Steven Moens: so he’d sail through a test. All the more reason for one. Reward good operators. Separate wheat from chafe.
@Eoin Scanlon: While on a mobile phone. I see it everyday out on my roads. Over half tractor drivers are on their phones and most drive at a dangerously high speed for such narrow roads.
Farmers getting teenagers because of their off time and no supervision like showing them Safe Practices of Work on the farm. There is a legal obligation there
@Thomas Corrigan: if legal obligation is never enforced is it really a legal obligation? . How many kids and young adults have been killed on farms in the last ten years, figure are higher every year and not a single prosecution. Where I work I can call for some one to be sacked for not wearing glasses. Four people asked to leave the lab floors last week for removing masks. I could remove a PTO shaft cover on a farm, have a labourer lose an arm and face no sanction. You reap what you sow
The name of a 19th Century British scientist (also an Australian city) immediately springs to mind.
@Alex Marquis: Sydney
@Caoimhín: Dr Sydney duh
@Alex Marquis:Prof. Yorkeys Knob
@Alex Marquis: Dr Mel Burn. He died in a fireworks accident while showing off
@Tony Walsh: Perthy Sledge?
The long skid marks from wide tyres on back roads is testament enough to the ongoing problem
Not only putting their own lives at risk but also putting their employers livelihood at risk. Employment terminated on the spot… no questions
@john deere: what’s this “sackable offence” thing? Are these not the kids of farmers being allowed to drive these vehicles. At least have them complete “farming simulator” without a crash before they get an ag licence, sad the qualification seems to be being able to turn the machinery on.
That was the norm back in the 70’s and 80’s and the tractors hardly had brakes working properly, I don’t know how we survived back then.
@Tom Fitzgibbons: Ah the 80s! Hanging off the back of a full silage trailer laughing like hyenas thinking we were great lads. We survived through blind luck I suppose.
So many close shaves!
@Will: We used to climb onto the step of a passing tractor, to get a lift to top of field when picking potatoes. You know the step, just in front of the huge moving wheel…..
Aren’t there a ton of huge blockbuster movies based around driving dangerously? We have all seen people drive like they are in these movies
@Craic_a_tower: lots of blockbuster movies with dangerous stunts, (performed in a controlled environment) but when you meet a kid on a narrow country road holding his phone out in front of him while driving a tractor towing a trailer with a combined weight in excess of 23 tonnes it becomes a problem.
@DERRY1973: people copy stunts in non controlled environments because monkey see monkey do.
@Craic_a_tower: I haven’t seen many tractor towing trailers during silage season in block buster movies.
@DERRY1973: More Speed 3 (Father Ted) than Fast & Furious.
Saw a video of a young man grabbing the safety guard of an operating PTO. Madness, 1 rotation would rip your arm off, 2 rotations would kill you. 2 rotations in of a PTO takes a millisecond.
@Caoimhín: You have a pto running at 120,000 rpm?
@Quiet Goer: Fine. I used it as an expression of how fast it is. You get the idea. Weird you concentrate on that part of the comment.
Unreal skills to be fair, IFA are jealous , association of no craic
Some peoples stupidity knows no bounds. Any fool operating machinery or driving a tractor and making dopey videos should be held responsible for any accidents that may occur because of their actions and should face the full rigours of the law.
We better ban footloose, playing chicken with two tractors.
Stupid antics of stupid people looking for social media likes
@John O Neill: I liked your comment.Are you looking for likes John ?????
@Conor Noonan: Did his comment endanger your life?
@Will: god no will, but everything posted nowadays seems to be people just wanting to get likes. That’s all.
@Conor Noonan: I notice nobody liked my post. Now I’m sulking!
Anyway, I miss down votes. There was a certain twisted pleasure in garnering down votes.
@Will: I miss the red thumbs as well, it tended to temper some of the mad comments on here
@Conor Noonan: brilliant
At moment it’s impossible get workers as most Eastern lad can’t come and crops have to be looked after. Hard control sons and such like as their conscripted into 12 hours or more driving mind grinding boring repetive often un payed work. Hopefully it end soon.
@den o sullivan: no excuse, what they are doing is inherently dangerous and one mistake could cost someone their life.
Natural selection. Just as long as their families understand there will not be a cent of life or farm insurance. Nice of them to catch a particularly severe dose of stupid just as our medical services are under particular pressure. I mean they really have nothing better to do than sending out helicopters and 4x4s with spinal teams to immobilise some window licker because he wanted to get a few likes.
Darwinism
Professor tikTok to the rescue.
Not a lover of the Tories but this has been blown out of the water.
Farmers?? It’s along time ago since iv seen real farmers, all you see now is young men driving about in expensive machines calling this farming with a phone is hand in case they miss out on a mindless video
have your say