Farm vehicles should be subjected to road worthiness tests - Yorkshire Post Letters

Some people think it's OK to allow different rules for different groups, I think they are wrong, in certain circumstances public safety should come first.

A lot has been made recently about how ethnic minorities are given more lenient treatment by police forces etc, think grooming gangs, why, a crime is a crime, isn't it?

If the law states that a knife can be carried in public up to three inches long it should be the same for all, military excluded for obvious reasons, the Sikh knife should be shortened accordingly, as should the dagger worn by Scotsmen on public highways, they still carry the weapon but legally.

Religion and national dress are used to flaunt the law.

Farm vehicles that use the highways should be liable to MOTs or at the very least an independent roadworthiness test to ensure they are legal.

On July 30, 2020, Jon Prigent of Chesterfield was killed when a loaded trailer travelling at 12 miles an hour, became unhitched from the tractor when it went over a speed bump, rolled back, bounced off a wall and over turned onto the car Jon was sitting in, killing him, a father instructing his daughter to drive, she escaped unhurt.

The attachment to the tractor's hook and ring were so badly worn and the trailer so badly loaded and over weight that the ‘accident’ was inevitable.

Because the tractor and trailer didn't need an MOT it was in effect legal, the driver John Banks was given a 16 month jail sentence suspended for 18 months, his initial plea was not guilty, he said he had checked everything before he set off, but it was all very dirty.

I wonder how many people actually realised that farm traffic doesn't need to have any form of checks for safety other than by the farmer or farm labourer. They should.

An actor firing blanks doesn't need a firearms licence.

Tree fellers now use chainsaws not axes.

There is always a maverick in all society or group, when something happens that affects public safety, and is within the law, then that part of the law should be amended to protect the public, there is no point in saying lessons will be learnt, then not doing anything and sweeping it ‘under the carpet’.

It's not a matter of sowing seeds, if a life is at stake, the law should be amended to one rule for all, no exceptions, cost shouldn't come into the equation, public safety should, common sense should prevail.