Well you can say that sometimes the law teaches a lesson and other times there are people that simply wont learn. This story seems like something from Florida, but Pennsylvania doesn't want to be left out of the mix so today's dose of dumb comes from Lancaster Country, PA.
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I knew a guy whose extended family had a farm when I was a kid. I only visited this farm a couple of times but was completely at awe as to how exceptionally powerful farm equipment is. The larger vehicles like combines cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and it is basically impossible for them to get stuck in the mud. They are incredibly powerful, the tires are taller than you are, and while we don't really associate them with drunk driving. While tractors and combines rarely travel on the road, there are transport vehicles on farms that are similarly powerful and are more road friendly. That is exactly what happened to one man in his late 40's who was driving an 1974 International Harvester 4000 series on the roadway.
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I can't say for sure if this is the vehicle in question because the police reports about the incident are being very kind to the resident as communities tend to be towards farmers and I think this is a good thing. The International Harvester 4000 series could be a wide variety of things but basically it is meant for farm use, isn't very fast, and has a diesel engine in it that is meant to last forever but just never be capable of high speeds.
perhaps that is why after backing into a RAV-4, that the man almost certainly could have driven all the way through without even noticing, he continued on his drunk drive down the road. The driver of the RAV-4 followed the farm machine honking the horn but the farmer was unphased by the commotion. After a call to the police they apparently knew exactly who the man was because once again, farmers tend to be well-known in their communities and are generally respected, as they should be.
The unidentified man was arrested without incident, admitted to drinking before the accident, was processed and released from custody. It took just 17 minutes before it was reported that he was operating a 2nd piece of farm machinery, this time a tractor of some sort - all of which are seriously powerful, and he was arrested a second time.
The reason why we can laugh at this story is because of the fact that the farmer just seems to live in his own world where I guess he thought that since the tractor was farm-looking machinery, that there would be no chance of getting a DUI in such a vehicle. He didn't crash the tractor, but apparently didn't really seem to understand what the charges were about if he would jump straight into another motor vehicle and do the same thing again.
Now here is where I am going to deviate from the story and interject a little bit of my own opinion. I believe that arresting him the 2nd time might have not been necessary. I think maybe what would have been a bit more polite would have been to either escort the man home following his tractor, or to have someone drive it home for him. Maybe give him a good talkin' to and explain that you just can't do that.
From the few farmers that I have met in my life I kind of get the impression that they aren't very interested in participating in the modernization of the world and many of them are probably living in a time still that if you got plastered and drove a vehicle, there were only repercussions if you hit someone or something. I don't really know how to call this one. I like freedom, but I also realize we can't have drunk farmers careening all over the roads with vehicles that aren't designed for, but are certainly capable of extreme destruction.
