SMV Emblem Marks 50-Year Anniversary

I was on Twitter this week and someone mentioned 2013 was the 50-year anniversary of the slow moving vehicle (SMV) sign. Being of an age less than this, I just assumed the familiar orange triangle present on the back of tractors, implements and combines had always been there.

I needed to find more information, so I turned to Google. After searching "history of agricultural slow moving vehicle emblem" I discovered an interesting website from The Ohio State University.

According to the Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering website, in the late 1950s a study of fatal tractor crashes was conducted by two researchers, Walter McClure and Ben Lamp, in the Department of Agricultural Engineering. Their research showed a significant number of fatalities were related to highway travel of SMVs.

The data showed an estimated 65% of the motor vehicle accidents in Ohio involving SMVs were rear-end collisions. So by 1962 OSU researcher Ken Harkness and his team had come up with a design and tested this new SMV emblem.

After various designs, a triangle-shaped emblem with a 12-inch high fluorescent orange center and three, 3/4 inch wide red reflective boarders was determined to be the most effective design for day and night visual identification, according to the website. The first formal introduction of the emblem was at a University of Iowa Safety Seminar in 1962.

By 1963, the president of OSU, Novice G. Fawcett, dedicated the emblem to the public. Also that year, the Agricultural Engineering Journal printed its first article with color illustrations of the emblem.

In the next two years Nebraska, Michigan, Ohio and Vermont all adopted legislation requiring the emblem to be used by SMVs. By 1967 the Canadian Standards Association adopted the SMV emblem as a CSA Standard and in 1971 the emblem became the first American Society of Agricultural Engineers (ASAE) standard to be adopted as national standard by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

Well, I hope we all learned something new today.

One of my jobs as a little kid on the farm was to move the SMV signs from implement to implement, mainly on our hay equipment. I remember wondering what was the point of these triangles as they would sometimes fall off or get bent over by the bales we were hauling on the hayracks.

Of course the point of the emblem was to make the SMV become even more visible to people operating cars on the road. We used the SMV signs like everyone else did in our area since it was the law.

I have written about this before but my first solo tractor chore was bringing hay bales in from the hay field to the farm place. A stream divided the farm in half and this kept us from driving across the farm, so we had to use the gravel road to get to the backside of the farm.

In the years before I could legally drive, I drove our John Deere 4010 and three-point bale mover down the gravel road which bordered the north side of our farm. I was probably only on the road for maybe a quarter of a mile, but I was a little nervous turning left into the field on the other side of the stream which led to our farm place.

When I was in high school my dad would often bale small square bales of alfalfa and drop them on the ground. It was my job to come back later with our John Deere 620 and hayracks, pick up the bales, stack them on the rack and bring the racks back to the place.

I can remember one particular time I was doing this chore in the cooler evening hours. I had taken a rack or two out to the field and stacked the square bales of hay on the one rack.

It was getting dark and I really wanted to fill the one rack so I didn't have to go back to the place without a rack. I finally got it full and made my way to the road.

By now it was pretty dark but I was only going to be on the gravel road for a short distance, so I pulled out onto the road. From behind the rolling stack of hay I could see lights coming down the road.

I made it to the gate and turned into the field and the car passed safety. But with no lights on the back of the hayrack, in pitch dark summer evening, this situation could have ended tragically for me without the SMV sign with its bright, reflective tape on the back of the rack.

Looking back, I am grateful to the Ohio St. researchers who created this safety sign. And I am sure you are too.

(BAS)

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