Morning crab fans, today I want to talk about the hard shoulder.
The other day I was travelling north on the M6 at about 8pm, I was in lane one doing 54mph and the traffic was fairly heavy. In the distance I noticed a set of hazard lights on the hard shoulder. In lighter traffic I might have moved over to lane two, but with the amount of cars flying past me I decided to stick it out in lane one.
As I got closer to the stationary car, I noticed a woman rummaging around in the open boot, probably looking for a scotch egg to stuff into her obese child’s mouth. Her choice of parking was less than ideal. Her offside wheels were almost touching the rumble strip, it was as if she was more scared of the grass to the left than the tonnes of metal hurtling past on the right.
I got closer still and she decided that she was now going to get back in her badly parked car. She walked round to the side of the car, stood in lane one and was about to open her door into the traffic when I sounded my horn. Hearing my warning, only then did she decide to look at the traffic coming towards her. She must have realised that within a matter of seconds she would be stood in a two foot gap between my lorry and her car so she ran around to the front and shrugged her shoulders as I passed her shaking my head in disbelief.
In three months of driving on the motorway everyday, I’ve seen quite a lot of this kind of thing. I’m pretty sure even the lesser evolved TNUK members amongst us are aware of how dangerous the hard shoulder can be. So why do some members of the public not understand that a lorry in the face at 54mph is going to sting a bit?
many years ago I was driving an artic through Stoke, passing a line of parked cars, with about 2 foot clearance… I was in a stream of traffic doing about 20 to 25 mph… having an occasional look in my left mirror,
I just happened to look at the right moment as some chap flung open the door of his orange coloured Marina.
Now Marina doors were about 4 foot long when opened, my trailer wheels whipped it around no bother, but I never felt a thing. He wasn’t very happy, but the cops weren’t very sympathetic towards him either as he was still ranting and raving and mouthing off about stupid lorry drivers… they took my details, sent me on my way and I never heard anything else about it.
