Coming down Garrowby Hill the other day made me think about using a runaway lane. It must be terrifying. Anyone actually used one.
Son in law (bootneck) said one of the lads used one in a tracked Viking and it just skied across the top.
There is a Youtube clip around showing a puddle jumper hitting one of these and the front axle stops so quickly as to cause the truck to do a forward roll onto it’s roof.
Never used one myself but back in the day with less modern braking systems it wasn’t uncommon to see a vehicle in the escape gravel pit.
Now on the rare occasion I wasn’t stuck on shap drinking me own diesel to survive it was a little trickier to do hill descents fully loaded back then.
Sure some real old timers know better than me but my technique was to hold her back at the top not wait for her to gain momentum then balance a low gear / exhaust brake with some cadence braking to avoid brake fade, now with autos I tend to go into manual on these as any fierce downshift can cause problems and mix in some light engine retardation with a low gear and steady braking. Unless on job and knock then I let the bugger go for it and cling on for dear life… 
midlifetrucker:
Indeed Runaway Truck Ramp Flip: youtu.be/4GoiSv5afSk
That’s not a normal runaway ramp though, it looks like work crews have piled up chippings to be used at a later date hence the truck ramped over them
I’ve seen an artic in the one at the bottom of Garrowby Hill. It was a bulk grain wagon and the trailer went over the cab. It would be an absolute last resort for me.
Dipper_Dave is absolutely spot on. You lose the speed at the top of the hill before you start going down it.
The one that always gave me a wry smile was the one on the QE2 bridge at Dartford. It was down near the toll booths with the result that any kind of queue (which was most of the time) blocked off access to it so a runaway would have hit the back of the queue before it could access the escape lane 
