THE latest challenge taking the internet by storm is #buckleupforiceman, created by a farmer from North Petherwin, following the death of Todd Riggs, from Holsworthy.

Todd’s death touched a lot of people and his close friends have now started a campaign to encourage the farming community to wear seatbelts in tractors.

‘Iceman’ was Todd’s nickname so #buckleupforiceman seemed fitting.

Craig Rowland, from North Petherwin, who started the farm safety challenge, was a close friend of Todd’s and said he wanted to do something to raise awareness following his death.

He said: “We’ll never know if a seatbelt would have saved his life but it’s certainly made people think about wearing one. If one other person can be saved due to the awareness of Todd’s death then this challenge is worth it.

“I was very close to Todd, we spent a lot of time in our late teens together, we would go out every weekend with the same bunch of lads on nights out and it was so sad to lose him.

“The six of us [close friends] have been keeping ourselves busy and are all doing something, like some are organising the funeral and I have been organising the challenge — I don’t know what we will do after the funeral though.”

Mr Rowland said the idea for the challenge came about by chance. He said: “I was sat talking to my sister-in-law about what we could do; we were watching Countryfile and saw their piece about Farm Safety Awareness Week — we were both nearly in tears. I put up a flippant Facebook post about a challenge and it got quite a lot of likes and shares so I thought I could take it a bit further and make it into something a bit like the ice bucket challenge.

“The initial video of me wearing my seatbelt had more than 61.2K views and 1.2K shares in the first 24 hours. My cousin, who lives in Canada, messaged me to say that it was already being shared over there — it has been a fantastic response. That is the beauty of social media, I hate it sometimes but it can be good in cases like this!”

It was one of his friends who came up with the idea for the hashtag #buckleupforiceman.

He said: “I had asked people to take pictures of themselves with their tractor seatbelt on — something many don’t usually wear. One of my friends sent me a Snapchat of them with their belt on with the hashtag and so we used it and got people to share their pictures to Facebook and tag and challenge two friends and it just kind of went from there!”

Mr Rowland said he had been speaking to many young farmers and wasn’t surprised to hear most of them don’t wear their seat belt when driving their tractors.

“Most of the time they complain that it isn’t comfortable. I know it isn’t always practical to wear the seat belt in a tractor as they are quite restrictive and can be very uncomfortable when driving over bumps but I have been asking them, ‘why not try it for one week’, after you have worn it in and gotten used to it you may not even notice, and if you don’t want to continue using it after that then that is your choice but at least give it a go — I will certainly be wearing mine more now!”

Following on from the online challenge, banners were displayed at Launceston Agricultural Show and stickers were handed out to farmers. Mr Rowland said: “The idea is, farmers can put the stickers in their tractor windows so it will be there, in their faces so they can’t miss it, reminding them to put their seat belt on.”