I’m left saddened, disgusted and slightly angry by some of the vitriol being expressed relating to the incident described. I’m quite happy to accept that some of it is in jest or a wind up but equally much of it is what it says on the tin. This incident is primarily about bullying with a secondary contribution of road rage. However there is also a worrying element of a lack of situational awareness and a refusal in comments to appreciate how, quite frankly, scary it can be on a motorway in small car…possibly we all drive large saloons or people carriers?
Maybe we long distance drivers need to realise that local drivers might have a better awareness about which junctions are a bit worrying to use and particularly to pass. There are plenty of them around the network, some with short acceleration lanes, some with angled approaches, some which allow traffic to join either slowly or very quickly, some with a poor view of potential joining traffic on approach in lane 1. The same applies to service areas, so many accidents happen at these two locations, yet there seems to be a lack of thought about the extra care needed by the through traffic to pass on-slips safely. Yes of course some car, van and lorry drivers either bully their way on or enter at warp factor nine … and yes, some cars enter too slowly. Maybe we forget that we cannot see necessarily the traffic in lane two from the acceleration lane easily, at least until we are an appreciable distance along it.
We should all know the following and more but it seems our presumed hatred of car drivers chooses to ignore it. What is scary in a small car? being surrounded by large vehicles, having a large vehicle close behind, having ANY vehicle close behind, overtaking any of several closely spaced lorries which are in lane 1, doing the same when lane 3 is busy and traffic in lane 2 is only slowly overtaking lane 1, being anywhere near a lhd large vehicle or being slowly overtaken by a large vehicle. All of this is even more worrying in clouds of spray coming of large vehicles and doubly so if our concern is that the traffic is going too fast for the conditions.
So from what we should have been aware, ( Fire service : RTC casualties can quite often survive a 60 mph crash but not a 70 mph one) and from our experience, what are we telling those we love to keep in mind? Keep well clear of large vehicles and especially lhd ones. Check HGV for foreign number plates. Don’t drive alongside a large vehicle, move out to lane 3 if possible to overtake a line of lorries because one may just pull out suddenly. If forced to stay in lane 2 in those circumstances then never get in the o/s blindspot, hang back in mirror view. Take great care at on-slips… move out one lane to protect yourself when passing and here’s the rub… do it early. Why? because as HGV drivers we get frustrated when cars prevent us from getting into the r/h lane at offslips etc… so do it early. (But we forget that driving our hgv as microlise etc demands, we use the auxilary brake to slow down and that means we are taking longer in our approach and that is frustrating to drivers of other vehicle types).
So 50 mph is slow, but there are on slips where we are entering the traffic in lane 1 more slowly than that. So we expect traffic in that lane to accommodate us by either giving way or moving over to lane 2. It would follow on that anticipation would prompt the more alert through traffic driver to have already moved into lane 2. S/He could well even have moved there before reaching the off slip in an attempt to reduce the chance of a late leaver diving in front.
I’m very tempted by the contention that HGV are underpowered and that is contributing to this, to argue the exact opposite, that the excess power of today’s vehicles and their improved braking performance has been accompanied by a serious decline in heavy vehicle driving standards, that being because we no longer anticipate the potential actions of other vehicles while cocooned in our quieter, more comfortable, loftier, safer cabs. We no longer sense the sheer physical effort required by the machine to deal with the weight being carried. This clearly also is indicated by the fact that we would never have merely sheeted a load some 40 years ago and expected it to remain in place. A few days in a fully loaded vehicle of the period would be an eye opener into our sadly diminished abilities.
And we wish to class ourselves as skilled workers?
) and where bloody great massive and heavy trucks (sometimes with inept drivers unfortunately ) are being baulked up and wanting to get past, unless of course the adverse conditions determined it…it’s hardly the most streetwise thing to do in terms of self preservation now is it?