Racking what’s left of my brain after many years in this job but I think tuesday was a first.
Down slip road to Blackwall tunnel southbound,just got over the lights.Noticed an artic waiting in right lane at front of queue waiting for lights to go green from A12.
Going into tunnel noticed it was still in right hand lane,thought he would move to left when he got a gap.Nope still coming with no lights on until I got the full beams and spotlights which I assumed he had made a mistake with his light switch.
Nope,it meant make yourself narrower I want to overtake.It must have been my fits of laughter that made my trailer wider and wiggle over the white line until I got out of the tunnel.
Moral of the story whether you are a McBurneys topline with a walking floor trailer or any other truck you ain’t taking my mirrors off in the blackwall tunnel.
[quote="disgo"Moral of the story whether you are a McBurneys topline with a walking floor trailer or any other truck you ain’t taking my mirrors off in the blackwall tunnel.[/quote]
Agree
That’s bloody dangerous in there. According to the most famous truck driver in Britain, if you hit the wall in there it could be a catastrophe 
OVLOV JAY:
That’s bloody dangerous in there. According to the most famous truck driver in Britain, if you hit the wall in there it could be a catastrophe
Maybe he can swim underwater?
I don’t have the ADR to handle all that toxic waste likely to be on the river bed though. 
Winseer:
OVLOV JAY:
That’s bloody dangerous in there. According to the most famous truck driver in Britain, if you hit the wall in there it could be a catastropheMaybe he can swim underwater?
I don’t have the ADR to handle all that toxic waste likely to be on the river bed though.
I reckon he thinks he can walk on water
Pity it wasnt northbound 
toowise:
Pity it wasnt northbound
i hadnt been driving long when i knocked the plastic air cleaner top off a 3 series scania on one of them dangly things in the outside lane 
No comment
It’s not theirs anymore,
This is our England now.
Paaaaarrrrrrttttttttyyyyyyyy
There’s enough room to overtake in the southbound tunnel, they use it as a two way tunnel when working on the old tunnel, so there must be enough room!
A few years back it was common practice for lorries to use both lanes, mind you that’s when lorry drivers were about, now there’s too many steering wheel holders who think that a lorry is a dangerous machine that will kill them at the first opportunity 
i go through there with a coach and there aint no way im letting some steering wheel attendant take my mirrors off
You get alot of tipper drivers in the right hand lane only to dive across the lanes to get off at the first sliproad out of the tunnel, apart from being complete [zb]s the other reason i guess is VOSA sometimes have a check point outside the tunnel and it saves them from getting pulled
newmercman:
There’s enough room to overtake in the southbound tunnel, they use it as a two way tunnel when working on the old tunnel, so there must be enough room!Not any more due to health and safety
fingermissing:
newmercman:
There’s enough room to overtake in the southbound tunnel, they use it as a two way tunnel when working on the old tunnel, so there must be enough room!Not any more due to health and safety
On what grounds? I never heard of anyone having a head on in there, so therefore it was safe 
newmercman:
fingermissing:
newmercman:
There’s enough room to overtake in the southbound tunnel, they use it as a two way tunnel when working on the old tunnel, so there must be enough room!Not any more due to health and safety
On what grounds? I never heard of anyone having a head on in there, so therefore it was safe
Best i can find taken from another web site .
I have never had a satisfactory explanation about why the two-way running in the new southbound tunnel has been deemed to be “unsafe”, or why the variable signage that allows this was replaced, at considerable cost, in recent years, only to then be deemed unusable. Why is what is OK in the nearby Rotherhithe tunnel “unsafe” at Blackwall, which has much better sightlines.
Tidal flow ran intermittently in the AM peak, usually in the window between 0630 and 0830. When northbound traffic built up to a point where excessive quueues developed in the south, a lane 2 closure would be applied on the southbound carriageway using signs, barriers and signals. through use of CCTV monitoring, a police officer working at the tunnel control room would establish that lane 2 was empty before allowing a platoon of northbound vehicles to use the southbound tunnel. This was relatively safe for the first few minutes as the northbound flow was closely spaced. However, as time went on, gaps would develop in the northbound stream, increasing in size to the point where southbound traffic would not be able to see northbound traffic because of the bends in the tunnel. At this point, the police would suspend tidal flow, and reinstate one-way working in the southbound tunnel.
On a typical morning, tidal flow might be implemented three or four times for around 15-20 mins each over a two hour period. These were not at fixed times, but were dependent on relative traffic volumes and the extent of gaps in the northbound flow.
The problem that occured frequently is that when the gap in northbound traffic increased, southbound traffic would ‘forget’ that tidal flow was running, and make use of lane 2, resulting in head on collisions or near misses. I don’t have figures on how frequently this occurred, but from talking to the officers who used to operate tidal flow, I know that near misses were reasonably frequent (several times a week). I know that TfL worked for a long time to maintain tidal flow in the tunnel, but eventually the police called time on tidal flow because of the reasons outlined above. I am not a fan of excessive health and safety but in this case, having seen tidal flow in operation for myself, I think the police probably got this one right.
Mad i know what next all streets 2 be one way