Safe Speed Forums

Jesus you lot don't half bang on.

56mph is NOT congestion, it's a temporary slow down. Big deal.

We do have (generally) cruise controls so if we want to back off 2mph then we can. It'd have to be everyone doing it though-if I back off 2 mph then the truck behind will just do the same thing with the same result.

However, I really don't see why we should pander to the wants of a bunch of impatient,incompetent suicidal tin coffin drivers with less than 10% of our training or experience who think they are god's gift to motoring while being more concerned with what everyone else is doing and driving up eachothers arses.This seems to be most people on the motorway these days.

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Smokebelching,CO2 making,child murdering planet raping,granny mugging,politically incorrect globally warming (or is it climate changing now it's getting colder?)thug.
That's what the government want you to believe of me. If they get back in I'm emigrating.

Aaah! Now I know what the lorry drivers who wait until I'm almost on top of them on a DC before pulling out and taking two minutes to pass another lorry think of me as a car/van driver.
If your opinion is representative, no wonder lorry drivers overtake each other with such disdain for everyone else.

Nos,

The big question though, is , why the racing?

C.

Soo, instead of mile after mile of elephant races we have a strung out "convoy" of trucks in L1 traveling at (say) 53 MPH
leaving L2 and L3 free for faster traffic!

And the problem with that is???



Well, that is the question isnt it!


As I said, most of my driving is carried out in vehicles that either Cannot go much faster than 55-60 MPH or that I am unwilling to travel much faster in (Range Rovers and Landcruisers are surprisingly economical if you keep below 55 )

However, when I am driving my van (Top speed 65, but acceleration above 55 is very slow and I wont even get 55 iif there is any sort of hill), the banjo music doesnt start to play just because I come up behind a truck traveling 1 or 2 MPH slower than me, I am content to just back off and fall in line. I do not feel any need to inch past with a few MPH advantage simply because I can!

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

As here - the HGVs are not allowed to use L3. France and Germany's Highway Traffic Law per their Highway Codes (of which I do possess copies ) state that the L2 and L3 users must be travelling faster than the cars they are overtaking - but within the speed limit - which in Germany's case applies to some, but all of its motorways. Germany's official stats show their unrestricted Autobahn to have the lowest KSI stats and overall - they are tie with France in position 5 after the UK who have dropped down the charts to 4th position as far as motorways accidents are concerned. Urbans, on the other hand, show France in the top slot with Finland and Switzerland snapping it out at chart positions 2 and 3. UK has slipped down to postion 5 and ties with Germany on this one. - based on the stuff Wildy found in their press and posted up links on this board to prove sources of this information

But again - we are back to courtesy.. COAST.

But on the other hand - the vehicle could have changed its lane because the driver knows that L1 will merge into another road about a mile ahead and he might be planning his journey accordingly - to be fair.


A lot of them will appear to be "tailgaiting each other" - but they are "gliding in the other lorry's slipstream to save on fuel" per one lorry driver and the driver of our police horse transporter.

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

That'll be because when your vehicle is 60 feet long then a gap is far harder to find than in your van.

Is 2 minutes at 55 mph REALLY that big a deal that people have to whinge on about it? I mean, that 3 minutes extra it takes on your journey must be really important. Hey you could boil an egg....must get a move on!

This is all hypocritical bull IMO...you bang on about "why should I have to slow down for this slower truck"- so why should the truck driver have to slow down for the slower truck in front of him?


Sorry IG, you usually talk a huge amount of sense but this time your sources are just plain bad drivers talking bull. Tailgating is tailgating is tailgating.It's dangerous. If the driver of your horse transporter drives like that you need to be giving him some of those points that give bad drivers prizes . It's only owner-drivers who care about fuel costs.

You will however find that a lot of the 'tailgating' actually happens in an effort to mitigate the length of time spent in L2. What you see as tailgating is usually part of the overtaking manouevre-they are close just before they pull out but you do't see the whole of the manoeuvre as you pass too quickly to observe it all. If I'm in my car and see 2 trucks close together I look for gap and move out to L3. If you can't see it then your COAST isn't up to scratch . It's a higher level of awareness though. 2 seconds is more than a truck length. You can't have it both ways...if you want trucks not to get close then it'll take 4 times as long in L2 to make the overtake.
We don't like pulling out early as the hazard from being too close to the truck in front is far less than the hazard presented by the idiot in a car undertaking then cutting across 2 feet in front from the blind spot and braking hard to below the truck speed when they see a vehicle 2 seconds in front. It's a common occurence if you leave the full 2 second gap before pulling out.... Have it one way or the other but don't whine about both at the same time as it just shows how little you understand.

Oh, and understand that everything I've said above is subject to driving conditions and an infinite number of variables too...

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Smokebelching,CO2 making,child murdering planet raping,granny mugging,politically incorrect globally warming (or is it climate changing now it's getting colder?)thug.
That's what the government want you to believe of me. If they get back in I'm emigrating.

Another problem is the set speed of the speed limiter.
Mine is set at 56mph. No problem until I come up behind a truck that has advertised on the back, set at 52mph, then you also have the supermarket trolleys that are set at 50mph.
It is these in the main that cause the congestion, by causing the elephant racing.
Then, of course, you have the car drivers trundling along in lane 1 at 45mph, some of these also love to speed up to 65-70mph once you have got level with them, then slow down again once you have returned to lane 1.
As far as I am concerned, any driver, truck or car, that pulls these sort of tricks are deliberately causing congestion, and should be prosecuted for dangerous driving.
Now, you also have the effect of tyre wear, when brand new, your speed limiter was set to 56mph, but as the tyres wear down, within the legal limit, yet still show 56mph on your speedo, but you could be doing much less.
The other day, I had a half load on sufficient to pull my speed down a few mph on the hills, but there were also much heavier loaded trucks that I could overtake, there were also unloaded trucks able to maintain 56mph up the hill. Then on the down hill, the empty trucks didn't have the weight to take them over the 56mph limiter, but mine did allow me to hit 60mph.
BTW, why does no car driver ever complain about the slow cars.
In the ideal world, all trucks would be able to maintain 56mph up hill and down dale, and cars would do the same only at 70mph, but, we are not in the ideal world, and you would end up with vehicles in lane 2 not being able to get off the motorway because of the continuous chain of trucks in lane 1 at 56mph.
I think the present situation is something that we can do nothing about, so really, we should apply COAST and get on with driving our respective vehicles.

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Semper in excreta, nur quantitat variat.

YES!!!

I counted what I overtook one day. I overtake more cars then trucks yet no-one seems to mind them...

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Smokebelching,CO2 making,child murdering planet raping,granny mugging,politically incorrect globally warming (or is it climate changing now it's getting colder?)thug.
That's what the government want you to believe of me. If they get back in I'm emigrating.

For me the problem isn't being held up for however long it takes the two heavies in front to sort themselves out, it's when they decide to pull out when you're already committed to the overtake, or haven't yet started to pass but are so close to an overlap with their rear end that you have to jump on the brakes to avoid a dangerously close call.

You go on about car drivers needing to pay more attention to what the heavies are doing, but IME some of your colleagues need to pay some more attention to what's going on around them too - they don't suddenly find themselves right up the arse of the truck in front and need to overtake on a moments notice, so why don't they give the rest of us more than a second or two notice of their intentions to pull out, if they even bother to indicate at all?




I guess it's a question of how much slower the vehicle in front is going, and how much disruption you'll then cause other traffic in order to get by, and that applies to anyone no matter what vehicle they're driving.

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Chris

A question and 2 answers for you.

1) Why are you getting into that situation in the 1st place? Good COAST would mean you see one truck close to another an will say an overtake is likely to be in progress.Hanging around the arris of a truck is a bad idea.

2)Actually we do sometimes rapidly close up. If I'm 2 secs behind a fully loaded truck and it comes to a hill then it will slow dramatically without brake lights. If I lose the speed that fast too then the whole motorway will slow down to well below the 56 I'm capable of.

3)No-one's perfect. Sometimes people don't indicate. Count the number of cars you see not indicating and the number of trucks and there'll be 10 times as many cars. It's not what SHOULD happen, but it does and you need to be taking account of it rather than assuming that nothing will happen unless an indicator is on. We all have to deal with other people driving badly.



It bugs me a bit that a lot of SS members seem to live in their own little bubble where it's an ideal world and get all indignant when the bubble bursts. Life isn't like that-and neither is driving.If I complained about every time I got cut up by an idiot in a car I'd be posting here 50+ times a day. It happens. We'll never change it without people understanding and they'll never understand til they do it for a living.

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Smokebelching,CO2 making,child murdering planet raping,granny mugging,politically incorrect globally warming (or is it climate changing now it's getting colder?)thug.
That's what the government want you to believe of me. If they get back in I'm emigrating.

I understand that it's harder to overtake in a big slow lorry, obviously.

What infuriates me is when I'm closing on two lorries in line and one decides to pass the other just before I get there, despite theres nothing behind me. If it's apparently fair to make me wait two minutes, then why can't they wait about ten seconds?

Of course, all will be subject to driving conditions. but in car you are not as aware as the trucker. But large vehicles are limited to legal speeds and not allowed to use L3 anyway



I would expect a competent driver to know that big trucks are more than 4 times length of averafe saloon and allow accordingly

We do accept and work with professional issues here

_________________
Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

When it happens 10 - 20 times in a journey those 3 minutes can start to add up! On one occasion several years ago it was more like 20 minutes before the overtaking truck finally gave up.

Not every truck driver does this though, in fact I would say very few do on the whole. I think the tendency is to remember the behaviour that annoys you and ignore the rest of the times you do not really have a problem.

Oddly enough I cannot remember a single occasion when a truck I have backed off for and flashed out has spent longer in L2 than he/she absolutely had to. Unlike some car drivers I might add.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

Observation of the road ahead means I've been aware for some time of the two trucks indulging in an extended period of slipstreaming up ahead with no sign that the tailgater has any intention of passing the leader. This lack of any apparent eagerness to overtake leads me to anticipate no difficulty in getting past. I close up on them in L2 giving the tailgater ample opportunity to see me in their mirrors, I continue to assess the tailgater body language as I approach and still find myself given no reason to suspect the status quo is about to change, I decide to commit to the pass.

Then and ONLY then does the f'wit in the tailing truck decide that now would be the perfect moment to pull out...

Note that I'm absolutely NOT implying that you, or the majority of your colleagues, drive like this. But please accept that [i]some[i] of your colleagues drive their rigs in ways which is bang out of order - it'd be unacceptable behaviour for someone in charge of a ton or two of vehicle, let alone someone in charge of 30-40 tons with the potential for causing serious harm to the vehicle whos roadspace they're about to invade.




I can fully appreciate that - car drivers get to experience this too when following another car with less oomph/more crap in the boot than ours. And I take that into account when deciding whether to make the pass or hold back and wait for the faster heavy to move out. But the thankfully few times I've almost been caught out have been on sections of road where there wasn't any change in gradient to allow the trailing heavy to suddenly discover a burst of speed relative to the leader, where I was given no reason at all to suspect they were about to try pulling out...




Agreed, and non-indicating car drivers who think they have more right than me to the patch of road I'm currently occupying also bug me (and yes, there are far more - I'd say 10x is a very conservative estimate - lazy car drivers than HGV drivers). But given that they're driving a vehicle roughly the same length as mine, it's a lot easier for me to get out of their way with a bit of right-foot action and give them the space they so desperately want, and if somehow I wasn't able to do that then the resultant collision would almost certainly hurt a damn sight less. So yes, numpty car drivers are a pain in the arse too, but they're less likely to kill me as a direct result of their numptyness.




I think that's a little unfair - I honestly believe I'm one of the "good guys" as far as car driver behaviour towards HGVs goes, because whilst I might not have any experience of driving a big rig, or indeed anything heavier/slower than a 1.8 Vectra with every last cubic millimetre of loadspace taken up with house-moving crap, that lack of hands-on experience shouldn't be mistaken for a lack of appreciation of at least some of the issues you guys face. Next time you see a dark blue Omega moving across in good time to let you merge from the on-slip, or holding back and flashing you out to make an overtake when you're clearly ready to make the move but before you've even started to indicate, or leaving you a healthy gap before pulling back in front of you, it might be me. I know I can't fully appreciate all the issues you guys face unless I do it for myself, but I don't believe I'm entirely ignorant of them either.

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Chris

Exactly

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Smokebelching,CO2 making,child murdering planet raping,granny mugging,politically incorrect globally warming (or is it climate changing now it's getting colder?)thug.
That's what the government want you to believe of me. If they get back in I'm emigrating.

You probably are one of the good guys.You're thinking for a start,and your head isn't up your own arse.That's an exception rather than the rule. However, you'd still be shocked if you saw what we see on a daily basis.

You're also quite correct-some truck drivers drive like morons. Just be aware that if one truck is up the backside of another he's likely to want to pull out. It's not about who's in the right when you're in the more vulnerable vehicle. It's about who walks away.

If you want a good tip, proactive is far better than reactive.

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Smokebelching,CO2 making,child murdering planet raping,granny mugging,politically incorrect globally warming (or is it climate changing now it's getting colder?)thug.
That's what the government want you to believe of me. If they get back in I'm emigrating.

Thanks, I do try to be a "good neighbour" to my fellow road residents, even if too many of them deserve an ASBO...




Frustratingly, this doesn't entirely match my own experience - I find that if a truck is right up the backside of another, they're more likely to stay there but also more likely to suddenly pull out with no warning if they do decide to overtake. It's the ones who hang back just a bit more who seem more eager to get by as soon as the first opportunity arises, which makes them easier to predict.

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Chris

There was mention of some wagons being limited to 50 or 52, if the limit is 56, why are they being limited lower ?

Surely not some sad, misguided PR attempt to be 'road safety concious' ?

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Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk

Fuel Economy.

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

Going off at a bit of a tangent here, I'd like to publicly congratulate the truck driver on the M5 in November last year, going south between J23 and J24. (No, I'm serious, not being sarcastic.)

I'd had a fault warning light come on so I'd stopped on the hard shoulder, switched the engine off, restarted and all seemed fine. Continuing my journey I used the hard shoulder as an acceleration lane, 50... 60... 70... started to move off the hard shoulder into L1... then an almighty jolt, ESP warning light comes on, ECU warning light comes on, glow plug light starts flashing, car slows down to about 45mph.

I glance in my mirror and see 44 tons of HGV bearing down on me (which was probably about a mile behind when I started to pull out). Quickly I turn the hazard lights on and watch the HGV for a moment to see what he's going to do. Is he going to pull out, pull onto the hard shoulder or stay where he is?

He started to pull onto the hard shoulder, I backed off and moved out towards the right of the lane I was in (L1), all the time keeping my hazards on, giving him plenty of space to pass on the inside.

Once he was safely past I gave a quick flash on the headlights and a "thumbs up", pulled back onto the hard shoulder and drove at around 20mph to the next exit (J23, about a mile and a half).

So some excellent driving on the part of that HGV driver averted a rear-end shunt.

I later discovered that the crank speed sensor on the engine in my car had failed - a warranty replacement sorted this out.

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Magistrates rule #1: "Never let justice get in the way of a conviction."