The problem dear East Anglian Trucker is that many of the rest of the current lorries lull, as do modern cars, unskilled unfeeling modern pilots, into believing they are drivers.
There’s traction and stability controls now, so just sticking their clog down in their auto rubbish and overpowering out of roundabout on the most worn part of a slippery surface doesn’t have the destabilising effect it should, the electronics take over and re-establish traction by cutting the power to suit.
This is all very well, but we end up with a whole swathe of drivers that have no ‘feel’ for whats happening under their arses, and whilst that may be fine for the thousands that swan up and down our motorways and into RDCs for 99% of their time in good conditions, it doesn’t prepare them for the interventions they need to make when things get hairy and ice and snow come into the equation, or swift but controlled evasive actions may be called for…why one could wonder are so many bloody lorries falling over now?
See some of the other threads running, new drivers that haven’t got a clue about hill climbing, and why should they, they weren’t taught to drive a lorry they were taught to pass a test, brakes to slow gears to go being the current thing…and again thats fine for most transport requirements when all thats needed is a semi trained chimp to attend the wheel and press the throttle to go and the brake to stop, but it isn’t giving us future lorry drivers who know how to control the situation when conditions and terrain arn’t ideal.
Axor doesn’t do everything for the pilot, no its not an ideal steering wheel attendants lorry because if you boot it out of a corner, A it will either want to go straight on and then probably B seeing its actually got a lorry engine that responds well it will spin the rear wheels up and very soon it will be sideways because it doesn’t do what the others do and drive itself.
We see the standard of driving out there every day, we see how too many simply haven’t got a clue what to do when anything other than selecting D and sticking the boot hard down is called for.
Unfortunately the electronic stuff isn’t doing the modern driver any favours, lulled into a false sense of capability, when it does finally go wrong, when our modern driver finally reaches the point where sheer phsyics takes over, all the elctronics in the world aint going to save them and anyone else in the sweep zone.
Just switching onto cars for a moment, it can’t have failed to have been noticed just how quickly modern cars, especially RWD’s, can be driven these days, thats because the electronics are doing all the work, people ask on forums why their BMW rear brake shoes are wearing out faster than the fronts, its because the stability systems are braking the rear wheels far too often in order to keep the vehicle on the road, these driving gods haven’t got the nous to realise that it isn’t their driving prowess controlling the unltimate driving machine, its the electronics constnatly keeping them out of trouble.
Now whats wrong with that you may well ask, well as in the lorry situation they are going so fast when eventually even the elctronics can’t cope that the inevitable pile up is often tragic, they get into aquaplaning because that light steering feel and slight twitch from under their arse doesn’t compute .
See, i don’t think its so great that we have electronics keeping lorries in check, a lorry isn’t a car and electronics have no place controlling them, they should be controlled by a driver who has learned, how we did from day one, to feel whats happening at the business end.
A ten-wheeler with an empty box on the back will slip and slide all over the place on the silghtest amount of moisture on the road surface - if you forget (or can’t!) put that extra tractor axle into the “up” position…