75ZT Community

We were returning home on the A17 after walking the dogs, a drive of about 4 miles on this 60 mph limited road. I pulled onto the road at a point where the next oncoming traffic was a slowish moving car followed by an artic. As I progressed I caught up with another two arctics, both going around 45 mph, with two cars quite close behind them, at the same pace,

A long way behind me, the car turned off, and the HGV behind him then proceeded to catch up with me, and he caught up very, very close. For around three miles I was travelling at 45 mph with this clown literally feet, less than a car's length, from my bumper. I had plenty of room in front of me, around 6 or 7 car lengths. He was so close that I couldn't see his number plate in the mirror

Really annoying rather than scary, as being an ex-HGV driver myself, I know this sort of thing gives truckers a bad name. Having said that, part of the route took us past a place where a few years back, a car with a family of four (mum, dad and two school-age kids) was in a similar situation between two trucks - the front one braked hard, and the car was crushed, only one boy survived,,,,,,). I can't understand the mentality of these drivers. Apart from the fact that he was only, legally, supposed to be doing 40 mph, what was he hoping to achieve? If he was trying to intimidate me into going faster to get out of his way, how did he think I'd manage that? And if I did drive like a loon and overtake the vehicles in front, he'd then have to do the same to two cars and two trucks! :shrug:

Total idiot.....

When someone tailgates me I normally slow down on the basis that if anything does go wrong then the result will be less serious. However, if anything goes wrong and it involves an HGV then only the people in one vehicle will be hurt and the speed does not matter.

There is now a law against tailgating - Paul do you know of any one being prosecuted?

PaulT wrote:However, if anything goes wrong and it involves an HGV then only the people in one vehicle will be hurt and the speed does not matter

In our case it would also have been two dogs, who were in the back right in the firing line

We did try to take a phone video of how close this plank was, but sadly it didn't work!

Perhaps it's time for a dash cam (with a rear cam too)?

Dave, think you are right about the cams. We drove up the M11 - a little slower than normal as our mobile accommodation unit was on the back. That meant more time to observe what was going on in the outside lane. Cars doing well above 70mph so close to one another that it is no wonder than when there is a crash a large number of vehicles are involved.

Now, HGVs travelling very close to one another. Can remember when I started work there was an owner operator who had sub contracted to a supplier to transport coal to the site where I worked. He told me that owner operators liked to get close to an HGV as there was a low pressure area behind HGVs and getting the cab in this area reduced fuel costs due to higher MPG. Was your HGV driver trying to scare you to overtake so he could get behind the HGV?

Loons the lot of them!

Just had someone drive into me at work Not a happy bunny.

PaulT wrote:There is now a law against tailgating - Paul do you know of any one being prosecuted?

From the statistics I can glean, there have been 438 fixed penalties issued in the West Midlands area, of which 18 have been taken to Court, a further 48 cases having been reported for Summons rather than fixed penalty. I haven't dealt with one myself... yet.

raistlin wrote:

PaulT wrote:There is now a law against tailgating - Paul do you know of any one being prosecuted?

From the statistics I can glean, there have been 438 fixed penalties issued in the West Midlands area, of which 18 have been taken to Court, a further 48 cases having been reported for Summons rather than fixed penalty. I haven't dealt with one myself... yet.

Thanks for the info Paul. At least there is some enforcement well, a little bit.

PaulT wrote:Was your HGV driver trying to scare you to overtake so he could get behind the HGV?

Maybe, but then he'd have had to have scared the two cars in front too! Also, he was local so would have known that he only had a couple of miles before the dual carriageway started....

Dave, so he is just a pillock

Yup!

being an hgv driver for 44 yrs, on arict's & heavy haulage you have to see to believe the tricks some car driver's do, but there is no excuse for tail gating anyone its is criminal in my mind, being a weekend driver now I see a lot of young drivers trying it on, giving the hgv driver's a bad name. mel.

So what tricks do car drivers do?

I know from towing a large mobile accommodation unit that I sometimes get cars scream past me and then pull in front and then slow down.

I believe that all car drivers should have a day in an artic. When I went on a class 1 course I was amazed at some of the things that I had never even thought about. Stupid places to park was a biggie in Birmingham. The epiphany for me was cars overtaking approaching a traffic island and trying to beat the truck. What I had not really appreciated until then was that the overtaking car was now within the braking distance required by the truck.
Trucks also need a lot of room on islands because of their length. My wife proved this when she put a BMW driver off the road. He was trying to overtake her artic on an island and misjudged the width needed. We were taught to block the island off with the wagon if we judged that there was insufficient width for two vehicles and this is exactly what she did. She had a BMW at the time so there was no malice aforethought!

I've never driven an Artic, but spent a lot of time driving a 7.5 tonner. Still gives you an insight into lack of rear visibility, braking and changing lanes. Towing a long car-a-van also elicits some stupidity from car drivers, especially since I can in reality accelerate faster than many.

Being on the road more now, the shenanigans from other road users is constant and everyone tends to show the same traits. The main issue is everyone is in a rush and have absolutely no patience! People don't seem to be aware of the stopping distances of large vehicles and so long as they can stop they consider the bus can stop too, so pulling into that gap at the front of the bus is perfectly acceptable! People are so desperate to get from behind a bus that even if you indicate for a mere split second you will be overtaken.

However, I do enjoy watching them overtake whilst sat in traffic. They follow so close behind (intimidation at that level on a bus doesn't work, you just lose sight of them!) that they can't see round you so when you stop in a traffic jam they decide you're at a bus stop even though there's been no indication. They then enter the on coming traffic to come round you with no where to go and then hold up the oncoming traffic. Been a few choice exchanges of words and gestures between a few drivers. They still argue whilst the rest of the traffic finally moves on, so got nowhere quicker in the first place! Or they will enter a filter lane at traffic lights to accelerate past you at the change.

It's also interesting how often you catch these people up once they've overtaken you, even when you are making all the stops.

Hmm...

The roads in Wolverhampton city centre are limited to 20 mph. You wouldn't believe how intimidating the bus drivers are when they come up behind me off the ring-road and have to slow down to the speed limit

Mind you, to be fair, a lot of car drivers seem to think the 20 mph speed limit doesn't apply to then either

There are still twits working for the buses

Mad-Monkey wrote:However, I do enjoy watching them overtake whilst sat in traffic. They follow so close behind (intimidation at that level on a bus doesn't work, you just lose sight of them!) that they can't see round you so when you stop in a traffic jam they decide you're at a bus stop even though there's been no indication. They then enter the on coming traffic to come round you with no where to go and then hold up the oncoming traffic. Been a few choice exchanges of words and gestures between a few drivers. They still argue whilst the rest of the traffic finally moves on, so got nowhere quicker in the first place! Or they will enter a filter lane at traffic lights to accelerate past you at the change

This reminds me of a (totally unconnected!) time when I was in my own truck 25 years or so ago. I

was going across to Manchester on the A57, approaching Mottram In Longdendale. There's a long drag up a hill with two lanes going up, where the right one is supposed to be a turning off lane. On this particular day I was there at morning rush hour, the road was pretty icy and I was either empty or lightly loaded. Because of the latter element, I was struggling to get traction and needed a reasonably long run once I'd got going, so I was waiting until the car in front had moved a long way off and then going for it. Of course, the Muppets behind thought "oh, he's not going anywhere so I'll nip round him in the right turn lane", did this and then pulled in front of me and stopped as soon as I got going! Took me ages to get up the hill, but I think in the end I did it by moving from lane to lane so the beggars couldn't get round me!