Might be an obvious answer here but why were speed limiters originally fitted to trucks, I mean what was the idea of them? Was it to keep the greens/environmentalists happy by cutting down on emissions, was it for road safety, to curb speed, was it both of these or was it some other reason.
All of the above, I forget the exact yeah of introduction 92 or 93
Rings a bell, by this time trucks were starting to get seriously quick my old 16.332
MAN would cruise at 70 the early limiters were easy to rig and it was a few years before everyone took to it.
I hated them at first but after a time we got used to it remember back then there was no cruise control the limiter meant you didn’t have to keep looking at the speedo all the time so they were good in that respect you could remove them tomorrow and I would never drive at the speed I used to but the roads
We’re quieter then can you imagine the chaos of trucks travelling at high speed today.
Have to say when I started driving with a limiter on iI hated it. But now I don’t mind as long has truck is doing 57-58
On of the first trucks I drove was an e series on an e plate that just missed the cut of point for having them fitted, so would have been about 87 when they became law. Remember we had a 89 e-series with a 325 rolls in it, open the passenger side cover in the footwell and swap the big brown wires over, tacho sat at 56 but my god the truck didn`t, used to do Swansea to Buxton in one bleedin hit! Also Paisley to Buxton in one hit! Bleedin crazy.
Hiya…one reason for speed limiters was to cut lorry incidents…loads of laughs.
i think 60mph in the 70,s was ok plenty of off the shelf lorries was good for 70 some and a few 80+.
i had a 3300 DAF it was good for 86mph. i know that because the chap who had her before me at
another depot go caught going that fast near Toddington one morning, when he was
checked out by his techo,s it was every night for months and months, he was getting back
for a change over with the day driver.the depot lost their operators licence for 6 lorries.
Times change in the 60,s 70s and early 80,s we had bad fog on many occasions(reason for fog lights)
vehicals was driving fast into blanket fog like 20 yards visability. it was mostly lorries crashing(to early
in the morning for many cars) this had to stop. we don’t get fog like it was then, maybe because
lorries are on the move night and day (turbulating the air maybe) as there was a time early morning
when there was very little vehicles about,(the night trunker,s had parked up)not like today there,s always
cars coming and going. in 1974 i could leave Stoke at 4am and only see 80 lorries when i got the Thelwall
viaduct and not as many further north towards Preston,if i left Stoke at midnight on a Monday i could go to
Preston and see only 60 other lorries. the Scotish lads had run down Sunday and parked up until 8am.there
was no supermarket night deliveries in those days…times was just quieter than today,s mayhem.
i don’t really know if the limiters work or not, to kerb the speed yes, but the frustration they curse buy
poor overtaking a poor idea… maybe if you could have a boost of 5 mins a day to use to get past other
same speed lorries would be good,like the curs idea on f1 cars. just to stop this long overtaking mangrove
on duel carrgeways
John
Wasn’t it to slow Samuel Williams’s Scania artics down?
I think it was 1992 when limiters came in ,no doubt it was a Eu directive ,my dad had a D reg E14 ,his mate had a E reg that had one on.
To slow people like my Dad down! Who used to charge down the outside lane of the M4 foot planted on the floor all the way to get from West Wales to tip Smithfield Market and get back in time to put a full shift in as the main mechanic in the garage! Wasn’t it Michael Howard who did that famous speech about limiters where he talked about ‘Juggernaut’s thundering down on unsuspecting motorists’
Dan Punchard:
I think it was 1992 when limiters came in ,no doubt it was a Eu directive ,my dad had a D reg E14 ,his mate had a E reg that had one on.
Dan, mine and Erics Foden six wheelers had limiters fitted and they were both F reg which was 1988/89 so earlier than 1992. Unless of course they were fitted before they became mandatory, like tachographs?
Oddly enough I chatting to a friend yesterday who drove for a local company and he was telling me how he used to be in the outside lane of the M1 doing 80+ with a Dodge artic and still getting in the way of Midland Red buses!
Pete.
windrush:
Dan Punchard:
I think it was 1992 when limiters came in ,no doubt it was a Eu directive ,my dad had a D reg E14 ,his mate had a E reg that had one on.Dan, mine and Erics Foden six wheelers had limiters fitted and they were both F reg which was 1988/89 so earlier than 1992. Unless of course they were fitted before they became mandatory, like tachographs?
Oddly enough I chatting to a friend yesterday who drove for a local company and he was telling me how he used to be in the outside lane of the M1 doing 80+ with a Dodge artic and still getting in the way of Midland Red buses!
Pete.
Adens E14 was E reg 1988 and he bought in 1991 and in 1992 it went to Marley tiles tacho centre for a sturdy speed limiter to be fitted .
I fitted 80 of the bloody things 3 a day on a one transport trucks 
keith
switchlogic:
To slow people like my Dad down! Who used to charge down the outside lane of the M4 foot planted on the floor all the way to get from West Wales to tip Smithfield Market and get back in time to put a full shift in as the main mechanic in the garage! Wasn’t it Michael Howard who did that famous speech about limiters where he talked about ‘Juggernaut’s thundering down on unsuspecting motorists’
No it was Malcolm Rifkin I remember him harpin on about those big lorries pushing him along the middle lane.
windrush:
…how he used to be in the outside lane of the M1 doing 80+ with a Dodge artic and still getting in the way of Midland Red buses!
There’s an oft-quoted story about Midland Red, when they used to build their own buses way back when, which says that some of the early motorway coaches they had when the M1 first opened were capable of the ton. How true this is I don’t know but I imagine it would have led to blow-outs and goodness knows what else if driven at 90+ for a prolonged period.
That said anyone who has driven coaches from the late-70s and early- to mid-80s will know that some of the foreign-made ones were no slouches back then, Volvo B10Ms were good for 80 and I’m sure they weren’t the only ones. You’d get shot for that kind of thing now.
Dan Punchard:
Adens E14 was E reg 1988 and he bought in 1991 and in 1992 it went to Marley tiles tacho centre for a sturdy speed limiter to be fitted .
That would it then Dan, my D reg was never fitted with one so it must have been from E reg onwards that they needed retro fitting.
Pete.
Olog Hai:
windrush:
…how he used to be in the outside lane of the M1 doing 80+ with a Dodge artic and still getting in the way of Midland Red buses!There’s an oft-quoted story about Midland Red, when they used to build their own buses way back when, which says that some of the early motorway coaches they had when the M1 first opened were capable of the ton. How true this is I don’t know but I imagine it would have led to blow-outs and goodness knows what else if driven at 90+ for a prolonged period.
That said anyone who has driven coaches from the late-70s and early- to mid-80s will know that some of the foreign-made ones were no slouches back then, Volvo B10Ms were good for 80 and I’m sure they weren’t the only ones. You’d get shot for that kind of thing now.
According to the CM road test on my coach, a mere Bedford, “it would cruise at 70” and that was in 1979. They were obviously not going to admit to driving above the legal limit.
That’s the word retro fit.
Dan Punchard:
I think it was 1992 when limiters came in ,no doubt it was a Eu directive ,my dad had a D reg E14 ,his mate had a E reg that had one on.
that sounds about right, I worked at kays from 1990 and limiters were being fitted one after another, the original set speed was 60 mph, the reason older trucks have them is as they had to be retro fitted back to a certain date in 1988, that’s why some E reg trucks have them and some don’t, later on all limiters had to be re calibrated to 85 k’s plus or minus 6, that’s how you get 56 @ 91k’s
Olog Hai:
windrush:
…how he used to be in the outside lane of the M1 doing 80+ with a Dodge artic and still getting in the way of Midland Red buses!There’s an oft-quoted story about Midland Red, when they used to build their own buses way back when, which says that some of the early motorway coaches they had when the M1 first opened were capable of the ton. How true this is I don’t know but I imagine it would have led to blow-outs and goodness knows what else if driven at 90+ for a prolonged period.
That said anyone who has driven coaches from the late-70s and early- to mid-80s will know that some of the foreign-made ones were no slouches back then, Volvo B10Ms were good for 80 and I’m sure they weren’t the only ones. You’d get shot for that kind of thing now.
In 1980 National Express were advertising Hendon to Birmingham, 112 miles in 1hr 50mins, an average of about 64 mph.
We live in a control freak nation, what do you expect…!?
windrush:
Dan Punchard:
Adens E14 was E reg 1988 and he bought in 1991 and in 1992 it went to Marley tiles tacho centre for a sturdy speed limiter to be fitted .That would it then Dan, my D reg was never fitted with one so it must have been from E reg onwards that they needed retro fitting.
Pete.
If you mean the ex Smiths one you had Pete, she was one of the last Smiths lorries without one. Although the little box on the E, F and G regs was opened by a few drivers…Not me, they’d been modification-proofed before I was old enough to drive them. 