Safe Speed Forums

Today I got behind a lorry overtaking another on a dual carriageway - one doing (approx) 55mph, the other 55.1 mph (+/- 0.1mph). We've all been there but this one was a gem - it must have taken him four miles to get past, building a huge queue behind.

Is there a law on this, either here or in other countries? Much as I dislike the idea of any new laws, one that actually got traffic moving would be a welcome change.

A better approach would be to ban speed limiters imo; or mandate the use of CB so that drivers can talk to each other.

(For example, you might be driving a 3 bazillion ton truck whose limiter is 2mph above the guy in front who is empty; quite reasonably you start to overtake him, and then you arrive upon a hill and start struggling to keep up - that would be easier to anticiapte with CB imo, although bear in mind I'm not an HGV driver so I could be making this up)

Again I think that the root of the problem was the introduction of the limiters in the first place. CB's certainly wouldn't go amiss either.

Fuel is so crushingly expensive that I seriously doubt many lorries will travel faster than 55ish anyway, but the limiter removes the driver's ability to use his initiative and get clear.

I am positive that a new law banning the overtaking would create more problems than it solved. I don't know off the top of my head what they would be, but I've yet to see a road law designed to solve one problem that didn't have adverse side affects.

I'm not a lorry driver either btw.

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I think that such a ban would have the same sort of affect as the banning of caravans from L2 up Naish Hill near Bristol. In that case, the result was a huge string of caravans nose-to-tail that meant overtaking vehicles in L2 had nowhere to go. So, a truck doing 50 mph up the hill could be forced to overtake a mile or more of traffic that was capable of travelling at its 60 mph limit but was forced by the ban to travel at 45 mph behind a vehicle that could do only that speed. Although the general consensus was that there was "no effect", I suspect that traffic actually slowed down.

Now, you have the multi-mile overtake but then the overtaking truck pulls in and traffic in L2 speeds up. With the ban, you'd have trucks nose-to-tail in L1. Someone bimbling along well below the speed limit would not be able to pull into L1, which would hold up the traffic even more than the current situation because it couldn't go faster than the (say, 60 mph) bimbler. I suspect that such a ban would thus mean the average speed would go down.

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Will

It is always going to happen. It even happens when somebody close to a limit overtakes someone else also close to the limit. It is just obviously much worse when it is two lorries.

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Shooting is good for you and too good for some people.

'Elephant racing'

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

All points taken. I was thinking of a rule alng the lines of "If you cannot get past within (60) seconds, you must pull back".

Observations please.

60 seconds? Surely we don't want them working with stopwatches do we?

How about: "You MUST give way to overtaking traffic"?

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Don't think any drivers would intent to make a nuisance of themselves. I suspect it's more likely that lorry 2 approaches lorry 1 and thinks he can get past, then lorry 1 edges up to the limiter again or whatever and lorry 2 gets stuck there unable to make progress, and unsure as to whether he can safely pull back in if he drops back?? You know - there's always one who'll undertake the waiting cue and park himself behind the lorry in L1.

Without the limiters the problem would pretty much go away. The lorry with the best power to weight ratio would climb the hills better, and the driver could temporalily squeeze the foot down a bit until he was past.

Notice that the unlimited 7.5 tonner type never seem to cause any of these problems despite being no "faster" as vehicles.

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Just wait until most of those are fitted with limiters too

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

I have to disagree here. While i can see the good intention, it opens the door for more aggressive overtakers to cut in sharply after a potentially dangerous overtake, not leaving enough/any room and to blame the person they've just cut up when there's a collision.

You must excuse me if I get a little excited here, but I do have very strong feelings on this.

Yes, getting stuck behind a slow overtaker is a pain, whether its a lorry or not. Banning lorries from overtaking would be completely the wrong solution however. How then would you deal with the problem of the f*ckwit who thinks that doing 40mph in the inside lane of the motorway is acceptable. (and this DOES happen with allarming regulatity - I can guarentee you that your average lorry driver will come across at least 1 per day.)

Removing limiters would solve it, but then IMO you would get a spate of accidents involving irrisponsible drivers trying to go too fast for their vehicles.

As for expecting the lorry in L1 to slow down? NOT going to happen. Something weighing 44 tonnes travelling up an incline is NOT going to be able to get back up to 55 after the overtaker has passed. This not only would involve at least 1 gear chance, but also would burn a hell of alot of fuel.

Like I said, yes its frustrating, but there is one very simple solution - hang back and wait.

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

Just a thought - and one that I neither support nor oppose: What if each driver has a limiter override button? Press the button and the maximum speed increases to the legal maximum for the vehicle for as long as you keep it pressed; let go the button and the limiter comes back on (obviously, any auto-braking function would need to remain inactive until the speed reduced to the normal limited speed of 56 mph). If seen appropriate, you could also have the tachograph chart record the pressing of the button.

This would let a limited vehicle caught in a "multi-mile overtake" in L2 briefly increase speed to 60 mph to complete the manouevre in a reasonable time.

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Will

Willcove - that will never catch on. It's far too sensible.

The views of a trucker would be interesting (do any read this forum?). I have no idea what practical difficulties they face driving those monsters. What I do see daily is anger brought on by "elephant racing".

There are few things more irritating that being held up for miles by an overtaking lorry who then decides he's not going to make it after all, and has to pull back.

What do they gain on a journey by this highly marginal overtaking? Lorry A may have 1mph over lorry B, but hundreds of other road users are losing perhaps 20mph - a full mile of progress in a three-minute encounter - to accommodate their little duel (think the maths is right).

Paul, I can't see what's so wrong the with the stopwatch idea. The Bill already have all sorts of timing / measuring devices trained on traffic, many far more sinister than a stopwatch. At least it would make lorry drivers think before attempting a crawl-past.

What's more, the 60 second rule would be reasonable. By my reckoning the overtaking HGV would need only a 2mph gain on the other to get past comfortably in a minute (he would cover an extra 53 metres - three times the length of the longest permitted HGV). If he can't make it in that time, he shouldn't be overtaking.

The police would need some discretion but it would be a useful tool when they see a couple of HGVs going neck-and-neck for a long stretch with neither giving way.

Excuse me but this REALLY isn't right. It only takes a tiny lift to make a useful difference. the loss of 2mph (~3 feet per second) will get a 60ft truck overtake done in 20 seconds, and a 120ft overtake done in 40 seconds.

I agree that it might be hard to convince the overtaken drivers, but they CERTAINLY don't need to change down and they will use marginally less fuel. They might not regain the 2mph before the next downslope, but really it doesn't matter.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I'm a Truck driver, of an Artic that can weigh as much as 44 ton.
I'm not going to try to explain what the difficulties are, but I will post the following article written by a fellow Truck Driver.
It points out more than just the overtake manouvre, and I do not post it with the intention of having a go at anybody on here, but I have posted it on other forums when the truck bashing started.
I feel that most of you will take the article in the manner in which it is meant, and I know You will learn from it, unlike on some of the other forums I have posted it.
I do apologise for the length of it, but I feel it would be infair to the originator to chop it up to obtain the bits that answer this particular question.

Here goes:


A few points:

1) Speed limiters:

With a few exceptions, the vast majority of artics have speed limiters fitted which are limited to 90kmh (56mph). However, there is a little bit of variance depending on who's set it and some trucks will do perhaps as much as 58mph, some only say 54mph but we're all roughly travelling at the same speed. Inevitably, if you happen to be the driver of one of those, which has, what's known as a "good limiter" (i.e. 57/58mph) then you'll catch up with the truck in front eventually.

Now you've said yourself that it's no fun whatsoever being stuck behind something you can't see round in your car and funnily enough, us truckers feel exactly the same and want to get round whatever is obscuring our view. It's easy for you to say, "Well, what are going to do with the few seconds you save?" but would you sit behind another truck for a considerable length of time that was going slower than your desired speed? I'll answer that for you - no.

Right, so the right indicator goes on and we pull out (see later) but because of the limiter it's rare that we'll pull past the other truck at more than 1-2mph. Yes we would like to accelerate up to 70mph, get past and pull back in but unfortunately we can't because of the limiter. Your comments about "after you've pulled back in you accelerate away no problem" or words to that effect is just your imagination I can assure you.

2) Slipstreaming the truck in front:

Okay, get this into your head: If we pulled out to overtake the truck in front once we had reached the "keeping a 2 second minimum gap from the vehicle in front" as dictated by the Highway Code then what it would result in is the overtaking truck hogging the middle/outside lane for roughly 10 times the length of time and distance you see them doing on the motorways today.

Generally speaking, all us truckers drive in the same way and if a hazard appears ahead that the truck behind can't see then the leading truck will give enough warning by using indicators/hazards/dabbing of brake pedal to alert the following trucker to ease off in anticipation of a hazard or follow suit of changing lane etc. If you're following any other vehicle that isn't a truck then you've no idea what they could do or what their intentions are.

3) Pulling out to overtake.

I'm not a driver who does the signal manoeuvre thing at exactly the same time. Depending on how heavy and fast the traffic is, I will indicate when there's a gap and move out when it's safe to do so. There are a number of different opinions of one's interpretation of "safe" and whilst I consider myself to be a good, considerate and safe driver there are times when I know the manoeuvre I make isn't as safely made as it should be but in my defence I feel that making it when I did actually kept the traffic flow flowing whereas I would have hampered it if I would have performed the manoeuvre safely.

I won't pull out into fast moving traffic IF both the middle and outer lanes are both quite heavy with traffic. However, a big gripe for us truckers is when the outside lane is empty and the Rover/Pug 106 driver is about to pass you doing 60mph in the middle lane, you indicate and they won't move over. THAT is inconsiderate and bad driving. Fair enough, if the traffic is heavy and there's nowhere for them to go then I don't expect them to slow down/move over JUST to let ME out but I will leave my indicator flashing, indicating my intention/desire to pull out.

What most non-truck drivers don't realise and understand is that if a fully-laden truck on the slightest uphill incline indicates to pull out round the vehicle in front and you don't let it, you are doing yourself no favours at all and shooting yourself in the foot. How do I come to that conclusion you're wondering? Well unfortunately most bosses don't give us a nice V8 Scania 164 580hp which will have no problems accelerating like a car up a hill and we are given trucks which will perform acceptably at half weight but really need working to keep the speed up at full weight.

Momentum is what it's all about. If you let that truck pull out - who will usually have indicated in good time for you to easily adjust your speed/get out of the way - then the flow of the traffic continues as normal because the trucker has been able to pull out without coming off the gas and losing that precious momentum. It's a very fine art being able to keep the needle at exactly the right position on the rev counter in the right gear to achieve that premium torque and pulling power. If you drop out of that by having to let off the gas and change down because the inconsiderate car driver couldn't be bothered pressing his accelerator pedal a millimetre to get out of the way then before you know what's happened, the truck's now down to 40mph and all the trucks behind him/her are all indicating to pull out round it thus slowing even more people down and hogging more lanes. Now do you understand?

A lot of truckers are bad drivers - I see it from them too which really lets the side down considering the rigorous class II and class I tests you're put through to ensure we are professional drivers but (no sucking up to the truckers just because I'm trucker) I think the majority car and van drivers really are inconsiderate/dangerous drivers.

Personally I blame the utter ease of the normal driving test, which is an absolute joke. You don't get taught to drive; you get taught to pass your test. Roll on when the day comes when the normal driving test is as hard as the class I one is. That would soon sort the countrywide congestion problem!

4) Car/van driver bad habits (where do you begin...?):

i) Slip roads on:

Okay, let's clear one major point up before we start. The short broken lines at the end of the slip road on mean "give way to vehicles already on the main carriageway" and "adjust your speed to merge WITHOUT causing anyone already on the main carriageway to adjust THEIR speed to match YOURS".

This very, very rarely happens. Car and van drivers come hell for leather down the slip road and either speed up and use every millimetre of the slip road and just manage to squeeze out in front of us as the slip road ends or do 1mph more than us alongside us on the slip road and expect us to move over to let you out. Err no. I used to do this, being the considerate and courteous driver that I am but 9 times out of 10 either 1 of 2 things will happen. 1) The driver who I've moved over for sits alongside me in the inside lane and I'm now in the middle lane having being nice and moved over to let you out and matches my speed wondering why I'm not accelerating past you and pulling back in. Obviously I can't because of the limiter. 2) The driver I've moved over for accelerates up my nearside giving me no acknowledgement of thanks for moving over and thus leaving me stranded in the middle lane trying to see in my nearside blind-spot looking for any other fools that have pulled out before I move back over again.

The courteous thing to do if another vehicle moves over to let you out is to pull out and keep your speed down to approx 5mph less than the vehicle that's moved over and allow them to move back over. Is it too much to ask? I've got so sick of seeing it now that I don't move over. I get horns blasted at me because cars and vans come to the end of the slip road alongside me expecting ME to adjust my speed to let them out. No, no, no. Your give way: You wait.

Sadly, this also applies to a lot of truckers whom I will move over for EXPECTING them to know how the courtesy thing works and do same, allowing you to move back over. Most truckers do in all fairness.

ii) Slip roads off:

DO NOT TRY TO BARGE YOUR WAY INTO A NON-EXISTANT GAP IN FRONT OF US WHEN YOU'RE AT <300YDS. This will result in us getting very road-rage like and if the traffic was at a standstill, getting out of cabs and having a few choice words. Also expect plenty of truck horn noise and much dazzling of full beam. If you had to brake hard for some reason after pulling into our stopping space and we were fully loaded or the road was damp/wet you would be killed when we hit you, as your car would be reduced in length to the thickness of a sheet of A4. And I'm not joking. I just hope for your sake it never happens. You're dicing with death every time you do it. Point made I hope.

iii) Two lanes; tight left hand corners:

We need both lanes okay, just face it and let us get on with it and stay behind until we're fully back in the inside lane. If we're overhanging the outside lane we're not slack and unable to see the white lines, there's a reason for it. Work it out and give us space. Same applies to narrow lanes on roundabouts when turning right. To keep the trailer either in the lane or off the kerb on the centre of the roundabout we need the front end to be half in the next nearside lane. Don't EVER come up the inside when we're turning right on a roundabout. The position of the cab and trailer in such a manoeuvre totally obscures ANY nearside vision. You're extremely likely to end up under the trailer if you do this.

If you do insist on being alongside on tight left hand bends on dual carriageways, then use your head and keep as far over to the right of your lane as possible to give us space if we need it.

5) Setting off from junctions:

Don't think we're taking the Mickey if it takes us a light-year to get up to 30mph from standstill. Going up through the gears takes time and much right foot when you're fully loaded. Pulling out in impatience and cutting back in is just unnecessary and inconsiderate. A good indication if a truck is empty is by looking to see if any of the axles on the tractor unit or trailer are raised. If it's empty then if the driver wishes, could probably out-accelerate you away from a junction or traffic lights; very much so if it's just the tractor unit (average horse-power of a tractor unit is 400hp, compared to the 60hp in your Pug 106 or 130ish in an average rep mobile, so it's no contest for us really especially as we know how to block change up!)

6) Downhill’s:

Yes we're limited to 56mph but if you get a steep enough hill the weight of the vehicle (and load) pushes you along and "through" your limiter. Don't be surprised to see trucks doing 60-70mph down an incline on a motorway without appearing to be braking. Trucks are fitted with exhaust brake's which when operated closes off a valve on the exhaust and basically speaking tries to stall the wagon and this keeps the speed down without needing to press the brake pedal.

7) Motorway congestion:

When will you people learn that driving up the backend of the vehicle in front gets you nowhere and causes even more queues? Changing lanes slows the traffic down just as bad too. Next time you're in rush hour traffic on a busy motorway and the traffic is all stop-start, look to see which lane is moving fastest. It's the inside lane. Why? Because us truckers keep a big gap from the vehicle in front and can see what the lane up ahead is doing thus leaving plennnnnnnnnnty of time to ease of the gas without the need for ever braking. You look at the outside lane and they're all 2ft from the vehicle in front, accelerating harshly, stopping that guy in the middle lane from leaping into that gap if they leave one and then when the vehicle in front brakes, they brake harshly themselves because they're so close to it they've left themselves no thinking time to see if the vehicle is lightly braking or doing an emergency stop. And so it follows back down the queue...

With the exception of a slip road off that is queuing back onto the inside lane of a motorway, the inside lane always moves the fastest. Fact. (But car and van drivers, please disregard this and stay in the middle and outer lanes)

And there endeth my rant. If any drivers still don't get it, then there's no hope for you ever. Driving an artic is no easy feat, the concentration and skill involved is tremendous and I'm sad to say that a lot of the time, it's YOU the other drivers that make it that way. Credit where credit's due though - there are a number of excellent considerate drivers (not just to truckers "needs") and to these I say a big THANKS from all us truckers for making our job easier.

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Semper in excreta, nur quantitat variat.

What is the speed limit for lorries on DC's/M'ways?

50 on a d/c, 60 on a motorway, assuming a standard artic

Which they will never acheive thanks to the limiter.

Just like coaches will never reach the 70 either, being limited to 62.5