"I didn't feel a thing"

UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS THE UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUM (INTERACTIVE)
21

We all see the driving that goes on every day so it isn’t really a surprise that this happens. A car probably gets pushed along by a lorry every other day somewhere in the UK. In every single case it could have been avoided of course and someone or both are to blame. That is about the size of it.

It seems that indicating to move out is now an invitation for whichever car is behind to put the foot to the floor. Obviously the hazard perception test hasn’t really helped with that. I regularly have my carefully left stopping distance filled with a car moving in and with slow traffic ahead. Result being I end up having to brake in a shorter distance. Nothing really you can do about it, but you can start to predict what is about to happen and plan accordingly; defensive driving.

When a clown meets another clown, accidents happen, no doubt.

22

cooper1203:
well as a driver of both cars and lorries i dont play silly buggers in either like undertaking a lorry then pulling out infront of it when im not past or even for that matter i dont walk behind reversing vehicles or right in front of them so my shoulder is brushing the front of the cab but thats another story.

Neither do I but that’s because we know about it.
Unfortunately most car drivers haven’t got a clue and that’s why we need to be aware of their poor driving standards.

23

Learn to use quoting properly and it’s much easier to reply

I know how to use. Fiddly phone is my excuse.

24

jakethesnake:
Learn to use quoting properly and it’s much easier to reply

I know how to use. Fiddly phone is my excuse.

Clearly not it seems Mr I know everything about everything and my comments are more valid than anyone elses.

Climb down of that high horse once in a while or you’ll keep getting nose bleeds.

Sent from my VOG-L29 using Tapatalk

25

jakethesnake:
Doesn’t matter who’s right or wrong, you keep yourself out of the danger zone and that’s that, being under the windows of a trucks cab is one of those danger zones.

If you think the average car driver knows about this or cares you are completely deluded.

Hang on a minute, you’ve flipped your argument completely, because at no point did I say the average car driver is fully aware of a trucks blind spot. I just said they are responsible for being safe, one of those scenarios is essentially, staying well clear of all large vehicles, definitely something you’re taught in driving theory at the very least, if not common sense tells you etc

Most car drivers are unaware of lorry blindspots because it is not a part of their driving or their responsibility.

You seemed to say that they shouldn’t HAVE to care or know about trucks blind spots. I’m saying the opposite of that.

26

Noremac:
We all see the driving that goes on every day so it isn’t really a surprise that this happens. A car probably gets pushed along by a lorry every other day somewhere in the UK. In every single case it could have been avoided of course and someone or both are to blame. That is about the size of it.

It seems that indicating to move out is now an invitation for whichever car is behind to put the foot to the floor. Obviously the hazard perception test hasn’t really helped with that. I regularly have my carefully left stopping distance filled with a car moving in and with slow traffic ahead. Result being I end up having to brake in a shorter distance. Nothing really you can do about it, but you can start to predict what is about to happen and plan accordingly; defensive driving.

When a clown meets another clown, accidents happen, no doubt.

It goes back to what I said before about teaching new drivers about body language, and how to telegraph your manouvres without indication. I guarantee in this scenario, if the VW wasn’t weaving between traffic hoping to be the next Paul Walker, they indicated to get into their offside lane whilst having their B pillar about where the FL corner of the cab was, and instead of taking a moment to think, am I really visible here? They’ve just decided to move over and not given anyone a chance.

27

As Cooper1203, you use your inbuilt self survival and common senses to avoid getting hurt and to avoid hurting others or causing problems, sadly these things are increasingly being untaught to overprotected (someone else is at fault and must pay up) children, who then become older people but who in many cases never actually grow up to take responsibilty for themselves, in other words still immature.

Many here, and the name of this very forum confirms it, consider themselves professionals, well being a progessional driver puts you in an entirely different league to most other road users which by calling yourself a prof you accept such reponsibilty.

No one expects us to be experienced or professionals at the many hundreds of different jobs out there, so why do so many expect professional driving standards from those who are expert in other things to have ouir standards of driving ability, and yes we know we as lorry drivers get called all sorts of things and sometimes looked down on as scum of the earth in too many cases by those who are often the very worse sort of selfish incompetent car and van drivers to be found out there, but regardless of their opinion of us we still have that responsibility to them.
It goes with the territory and always has done, we have to look out for fools in cars and vans because they don’t know how to and sadly so many of the people behind the lorry steering wheel these days are basically car drivers who have passed a lorry test, they have no interest in the job nor being as proficient as they can nor taking any pride in what they do.

I’ve said this umpteen times before, when you next get in a lorry after someone else, judge for yourself how the mirrors are set up.
I can tell you how too many are:
Main mirrors set too high and too close giving a clear view of the top half of the trailer and only half the road some 30 or more yards behind the tractor.
Smaller wide angle mirrors also set high and set for extra vision on turns, they are not meant for that they are most effective as blind spot mirrors set lower where at the top of the mirror you can see half way up the trailer body, this will allow full vision including seeing the drive axle tyres and in some cases the second steer on a tractor.
NS top door mirror, again too many give a lovely view of the cab door, these should be set so you can only just see the wheelarch and tyre at the top edge and should be set straight so overlappping the front down mirror, again which too many are set too close.
Quite how some of them get through a day given the lack of vision is amazing in itself, chances are those ill set mirrors and the windows through which to see in them were filthy when they started work and worse when they finished, and don’t get me started on the myriad of fairy lights inside some cabs reflecting on the grimy windows turning everything outside into gloom and shadow.

Set correctly, kept clean (also the windows) it should not be possible for any vehicle/pedestrian/cyclist to hide themselves anywhere within 6/10ft of the front or sides of the vehicle, in other words used as they should be ie sweeping a section of road before changing lanes…and a pro driver being aware near slip roads that someone might have undertook them…such accidents should never happen.

28

That’s the whole point. My old man would always say, is it better to be “right and dead” , or “wrong and alive”.

You see the opposite of that mentality all the time with people deciding to cane it over a mini-roundabout from 100m’s back whilst screaming “GIVE WAY TO THE RIGHT” out of the window to everybody already ON the roundabout.

Lack of awareness is a huge issue, but so is people absolving themselves of blame and responsibility.

Best advice I got was “any crash you’re involved in, is your fault”.

On the surface it seems like a ■■■■■■■■ statement, but omitting the egregiously one sided crashes [getting wiped out at a red light for example] you have to extrapolate it like this, people don’t wanna live in the “rough” part of town, why? It wouldn’t be right if they were attacked or robbed and nobody deserves that, but people aren’t bothered about being in the right, they’re bothered about being safe, so people who can afford to live elsewhere are going to do it, they’re not going to force themselves to be in a potential situation just because they’re legally in the right… but somehow when people get behind the wheel all of this changes for the majority and they will risk financial or physical damage just to prove how legally correct they were or how legally incorrect someone else was…

Any decision and subsequent decision that puts you closer to scene of the accident just increases your percentage of responsibility for the crash in the first place.

So in reality the above advice evolves into “any crash you’re involved in you share some percentage of responsibility” whether it’s assuming that just because you have a green light, everyone is automatically guaranteed to stop for their red or whether it’s someone who clearly doesn’t know what lane to be in on a roundabout, but you still jam it down their inside anyway etc etc

There’s always something you can do to mitigate 99.9% of crashes

Give people a mask [a vehicle] and you see who they really are…

Some people seem to think once they’re legally doing nothing wrong, that they have no obligation to avoid crashes, in many cases in dash cams, you see camera cars turn IN to a crash or speed up to make sure it happens!

29

simcor:

jakethesnake:
Learn to use quoting properly and it’s much easier to reply

I know how to use. Fiddly phone is my excuse.

Clearly not it seems Mr I know everything about everything and my comments are more valid than anyone elses.

Climb down of that high horse once in a while or you’ll keep getting nose bleeds.

Sent from my VOG-L29 using Tapatalk

Oh dear, I could say the same about you and a few others on here.

My comments are no more valid than anyone else’s but my opinion may be different at times as everyone has their own opinion.
I am not biased like a lot on here and with 50 years involved in transport and training I have plenty of experience and know for sure many lorry drivers are just as bad as many car drivers.
As someone said. When a clown meets a clown.
Trouble is there seems to be more and more clowns every day and most probably regard themselves as excellent drivers and that’s part of the problem.

More police required to get these dangerous clowns off the roads.

30

jakethesnake:

simcor:

jakethesnake:
Learn to use quoting properly and it’s much easier to reply

I know how to use. Fiddly phone is my excuse.

Clearly not it seems Mr I know everything about everything and my comments are more valid than anyone elses.

Climb down of that high horse once in a while or you’ll keep getting nose bleeds.

Sent from my VOG-L29 using Tapatalk

Oh dear, I could say the same about you and a few others on here.

My comments are no more valid than anyone else’s but my opinion may be different at times as everyone has their own opinion.
I am not biased like a lot on here and with 50 years involved in transport and training I have plenty of experience and know for sure many lorry drivers are just as bad as many car drivers.
As someone said. When a clown meets a clown.
Trouble is there seems to be more and more clowns every day and most probably regard themselves as excellent drivers and that’s part of the problem.

More police required to get these dangerous clowns off the roads.

Your the one who keeps banging on about everything every chance you can. You clearly know better than everyone else and couldn’t possibly learn a thing or two yourself.

Humility obviously isn’t a strong point of yours.

Either way enjoy yourself because frankly I’m bored of even discussing it any further with you.

Sent from my VOG-L29 using Tapatalk

31

Banging on about it? I made a comment about an accident that probably should never have happened and why. Your first comment said more or less the same thing did it not?

Bored? Not a problem for me. :wink:

32

jakethesnake:
My point is this would probably not have happened to most drivers. Drivers who are aware of what is going on around them and not in a daydream or playing with one of their toys. It also all boils down to drivers (car and lorrys) leaving insufficient gaps.
Some are just too quick to use a blindspot as an excuse.
I completely concur with simcor and Juddian.

You’ve not done this job long or driven many different lorries have you? Hands up anyone who has driven one of the older Volvo FHs with the large single piece mirrors. For those of us who have you know that the drivers mirror creates a massive blind spot. Depending on your speed as you approach a roundabout or junction such as at the end of a sliproad and the speed of a car already on the roundabout/road approaching where you enter from the right it is entirely possible for that mirror to completely hide that car as you drive the full length of the sliproad and you suddenly find a car in front of you as you begin to pull out.

Then there’s lorries with high cabs. You get a low car sitting three or four feet to the side of it the front of the car slightly ahead of the lorry it’ll be out of range of both passenger side blind spot mirrors and because of your line of sight from your driving position it’ll be below the bottom of the windscreen and the door window. You’ll not see it. It’s simple maths. If you draw a line going from your eyes through the bottom of the passenger door glass or windscreen and extend it out from the vehile and then eliminate the area covered by the blindspot mirrors then anything that is below that line is invisible to you and the lower down the level of your eyes the higher that line is and the taller the vehicle can be and still remain out of your vision. It’s simple rudimentary maths and physics. If you think I’m lying then explain this one then pal done by TfL where all the mirrors are set correctly and remember cyclists are much taller than cars are…

youtube.com/watch?v=lV-rhiGRFTE

33

For someone that supposedly has a degree you quite often come across as pretty dim.

If you haven’t worked out by my previous posts about my lorry driving you are not the sharpest tool.

FH6 you say, ever tried an F86 or 88. No, I thought not. Trained at ASMT. when the driver training was abysmal.

Why didnt you mention the door pillar when approaching roundabouts and you seem to have forgotten about moving your head and your upper body to omit things like mirrors as many don’t seem to think is so important. Rather sit on their backside and have an occasional glance in the mirror blaming everyone else.

As has been said plenty times modern trucks are a complete doddle compared to back in the days when we had proper drivers. Modern truck blind spots are quite often caused by the unobservant driver and as a poor excuse for bad driving.