General safety issues while driving on rural roads

Anyone driving in rural America needs to take into account various hazards that may not be common to urban/suburban driving. Please do not let the smaller number of vehicles on the road lull you into a complacency that leads to loss of focus on the road ahead. Some of those vehicles represent a special category of potential hazards.Not every vehicle has fully functional lights, speedometer, gauges, brakes, windshield wipers, etc. That slow-moving 1949 Chevy truck with 12 tons of grain in the bed spends 355 days per year in a shed, waiting to be put to use for those few days. The tires may be adequate, but, marginal should anything unusual occur. Such as slamming on the sticky brakes and feeling the momentum of the semi-fluid grain trying to push through the cab. Sudden turns into invisible driveways on either side of the road can happen at any time when the truck is empty. The temptation to pass while going up hill can be fatal. I had a fellow do that today. He shot by me doing about 80 while I was only going 55. He didn't know what I knew about the other side of the hill. Lucky, for him, the busier-than-normal intersection had no vehicles in a critical path. I had a big bale weighing between 1500 and 1800 lbs on the back of my pickup. The electric over hydraulic system tends to let the lift lower over time. One must pay attention and raise the cylinder from time to time. If you forget about this, you get to watch how conservation of momentum affects the bale as contact with the ground removes the bale from the spears to create a flying mass of material that can crush large trees in an instant. Braking is fun, as well, as the center of gravity of the bale is about even with your neck in the driver's seat. Today's large tractors and combines, plus pulled implements, are much wider than a single lane of traffic. One may be just over the top of that hill, such that it is a hazard that cannot be avoided safely in an instant of recognition.