Lacombe County wants to make sure the farm vehicles used on roads is up to standard safety wise before they hit the fields, by hosting a voluntary farm vehicle safety check this week.

Senior Peace Officer with the County Mark Sproule says this is a chance to get your vehicle up to code before you receive a ticket or fine, or are involved in a more serious situation.

But he stresses that if your vehicle is not road worthy, you can make other arrangements for an inspection.

“If you can’t make it down to the check because your vehicle is in a bad state, we’ll make an arrangement with you to come out to your farm and do an inspection there because we don’t want to have those unsafe vehicles on the road.”

If safety violations are found, no ticket will be issued, instead they will be noted and the driver will be told how to proceed with repairs says Sproule.

“We’re going to work with you to make sure we can get that vehicle to a state where it can get down the road safely, whether that be helping line up and take care of a tow truck to get back to a facility that can make those repairs. We’re not doing repairs; we’re just identifying issues on vehicles. The focus of this check is commercial vehicle safety, and the education of our agriculture community.”

The farm vehicle safety inspections starts Tuesday, April 17th, at the West County shop located on Rainy Creek Road near RR3-0, and Wednesday at the East County shop located on Hwy 12 and Hwy 821, Tees, from 9am until 3pm, and is open to any registered farm highway unit.

For more information, you can go to Lacombe County’s website.