Video: Driverless John Deere tractor terrorizes Walmart parking lot

A couple in Richmond Hill, Georgia Ontario were returning from the car wash when they noticed a strange late-night gathering at the local Walmart. Curious, they stopped to see what the fuss was about, and were confronted with the spectacle of a driver-less John Deere Tractor careening around the parking lot.

The tractor in question wasn't just your regular, run-of-the-mill lawn tractor, either. No, the phantom tractor was a four-wheel-drive Deere equipped with enough snowplow to clear Vail in January. The tractor spent five minutes jogging circles around the parking lot, gouging the side of the Walmart and annihilating an unsuspecting Suzuki SX4 and Toyota Corolla while slackjawed onlookers stood by doing nothing and area police literally drove in circles.

Eventually, someone with enough cojones decided to climb aboard the wayward farm machinery and try to stop the madness... but did they succeed?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxBwA...layer_embedded

http://www.autoblog.com/2011/04/10/v...lmart-parking/

 

Nothing runs like a Deere.

 

I love how they are all just looking at it.... bet the guy who is responsible for that just lost his job.

 

i was about to say...... nice video quality. This can't be the Iphone 4.
Then i see there's 1080p video, and realize this is no camera phone.

anyway, how come everyone was just standing like an idiot ? as slowly as it was running, someone could have jumped onto it and stopped it.... especially the police.

i thought cops were better trained.
or maybe they ate too many donuts that morning.

 

John Deere really doesn't like foreign made cars At least the SLK survived. One thing does the John Deere have a roomba mod or something, it kept going in circles.

 

It was not like a runaway train , someone in the crowd could have easily jumped on it and stopped it before causing damage.

 

You need to remember the cab on a John Deere has a lockable door and not doors on both sides. Jumping on was very dangerous. The back window was open, but climbing in the back also would have been dangerous. Hitting that light post in the wrong spot wouldn't have been pretty either.

I didn't read all 390 some comments. Had the driver collapsed in the tractor or managed to get out with the tractor in gear leading to a run away? Is the full story posted somewhere?

 

I would not risk my life to jump on that tractor. It may have appear to be going slow in the video but I bet it was pretty fast in real life.

I want to read the rest of the story too, how did the tractor get there lol

 

why would they have equipment like that in a walmart parking lot???? seems odd.

 

I always knew the parking lot at Walmart required extra precautions.

 

Haha I never would have guessed this would have made international news lol (And by international I mean a car forum)..This happened at a Walmart plaza 2 minutes from my Girlfriends house!

 

I believe it was in Ontario. Large stores in northern climates often have fairly large tractors with those big snow pushers on the front. A local landscape company usually has the contract to clear the parking lots and they keep the equipment there. I suspect some kid got it started (found a hidden key, key left in the ignition, or just a push button start), put the thing in gear, got scared, and jumped out. Not that I would know anything about driving construction equipment as a little kid because, well, it just kinda idled there without moving until we found the kill switch.

 

I guess John Deere has been outsourcing throttle pedal assemblies from Toyota

 

you can't shift to N on a tractor???