By Yin Haodong & Cheng Yu, Research Department of Rural Economy, DRC

Research Report, No.27, 2021, (Total 6092) 2021-3-2

Abstract: With the advancement of mechanization for agricultural production and the improvement of farmers’ livelihood, the number of motor vehicles in rural areas has increased rapidly. However, due to traffic safety problems in terms of farm vehicles, traffic accidents have become quite high in recent years, resulting in mass casualties and consequently arousing serious public concerns. The reasons leading to the above-mentioned facts are roughly as follows. Rural traffic safety management mechanism is not sound and relevant rules for supervision are hard to be implemented. Farm vehicles are generally in poor conditions, and lack of adequate security measures. Farmers’ knowledge on traffic safety is limited and their traffic safety awareness is weak. Besides, the traffic conditions of rural roads need to be improved. In order to meet the requirements of rural modernization, multiple measures need to be taken to strengthen the safety management of farm vehicles. We need to perfect the supervision system of rural road traffic through cohesive efforts made by different departments; we need to consolidate supervision over farm vehicles and put farm vehicles of various kinds in rural areas under supervision; we need to enforce training and safety education for rural drivers, further improve the rural transportation environment and build an accessible grassroots passenger transport service system.

Keywords: farm vehicles, traffic accidents, safety management