What should I tell my [non truck] fleet manager?

[osmium]

Maybe an unusual 1st post but directed her from a lad at work to ask…

Friday I join the mway, I only stay on for one junction and it is a busy section so I stay in the inside lane for the three miles doing the prevailing speed of that lane.

Lorry A (an ■■■ transporter) in in lane 1 and I’m in front of him as I get to the end of the slip, three to four cars ahead of him.

Lorry B is besides lorry A, with his cab about level with me, in lane 2 and lorry C three to four car lengths ahead of me in lane 1.

So I join lane 1. Lorry C dabs the brakes (traffic slows in front?) so I go from the 55-60 mph I’ve joined down to 50-55 mph, solely by taking my foot off the accelerator.

Lorry B at this point decides to indicate left whilst his cab has now passed me as the inside lane is perhaps 10 mph slower than the middle. So I stay at 50-55 mph (54 says the car heads up but I know there is a margin of error) and watch lorry B pass my bonnet and before I can flash him in, lo and behold, he is swinging to lane 1.

I know lorry A is behind me so rather than panic brake, I keep foot off accelerator and let the safe stopping distance build up again between me and lorry A. I’ll mention at this point I’m in one of my works fleet cars, which have front and back cameras and being oh so clever Peugeot 3008, has a heads up display (which is captured on the cameras in car).

Lorry A seems annoyed as the car beeps at me to let the stopping distance / time interval between me and the lorry B go up from 0.1 s (which it was at the point lorry A pulled in) to somewhere between 1 - 2 s (2s being traditional stopping distance gap)?

I judge lorry As annoyance on three facts:
a) Full beams now on
b) Horn permanately on.
c) Lorry A pulling into lane 2, starting to pass me, then indicating left again and using intermittent horn now, once he was level and pushing me onto the hard shoulder!!!

Now, works always like us to inform them if there is “anything they’d like us to tell them about” that might be on the in car recording as they randomly download these, (routinely in the case of accidents), so I told fleet manager.

Fleet manager has taken a copy of the video and reported to police, but as part of my ‘updated’ company travel risk assessment / awareness driver improvement I have to give FM a ‘statement’ as to how in future I could improve my driving to prevent being in a similar scenario.

I’ll not say anything sarky like I should have pushed lorry A to go faster, or resisted lorry B putting me on the HS and pushed him into the other carriageway instead, but FFS■■?

Over to those that know how trucks work - I’ll like to give the thread back to my fleet manager to say that’s how the profs would deal with it so keep it fairly clean…

(Apart from if you were an ■■■ driver, M6 North, Fri 8 am, you twunt).

[bald_bloke]

It took a couple of goes at reading but lorry A certainly was out of order but lorry B also cut you up a little by the the sound of it but lorry A sounds like the biggest idiot to me, it doesn’t sound like you really done anything wrong although someone will probably be along soon to slate you i’m sure.
Sometimes these things happen in life especially on the M6 at rush hour.

[ian_g]

Get out of lane 1 and go faster than the lorrys, mostly.

You’ve joined and by all accounts got right in the way of everyone.

You don’t say whether it would have been safe to join right at the back of all of it, then accelerate up to a speed whereby you weren’t sitting alongside anyone.

■■■■■■ me off on a daily basis, car drivers coming on thinking that traffic needs to give way to them and they have a right to enter in the path of people who are not required to give way. Then who sit there faffing when you want to get back over.

Tell your FM in future you’ll actually observe the rules of the slip and get the hell out the road instead of making people in bigger stuff mad.

Three miles just in case you need to come off? Suppose you left it in fourth as well.

[bald_bloke]

Ian G:
Get out of lane 1 and go faster than the lorrys, mostly.

You’ve joined and by all accounts got right in the way of everyone.

You don’t say whether it would have been safe to join right at the back of all of it, then accelerate up to a speed whereby you weren’t sitting alongside anyone.

■■■■■■ me off on a daily basis, car drivers coming on thinking that traffic needs to give way to them and they have a right to enter in the path of people who are not required to give way. Then who sit there faffing when you want to get back over.

Tell your FM in future you’ll actually observe the rules of the slip and get the hell out the road instead of making people in bigger stuff mad.

Three miles just in case you need to come off? Suppose you left it in fourth as well.

Well i knew it wouldn’t be too long.

[jossk1990]

■■■■■■ myself at Iain’s post as that was my first thoughts as well

[shuttlespanker]

you joined the motorway in a safe gap, as long as you kept up with the speed of the traffic, what is the problem?

from the sound of it, you were in the blind spot of lorry B

why did lorry B decide to rejoin lane 1 after lorry C dabbed the brakes?

if you kept up with the traffic, as you said, the driver of Lorry A is a ■■■■■■■■ (Ian G perhaps?) for not reading the situation correctly

if, again, as you say, the car has got front and rear CCTV, then the evidence is there for the FM to see

[green456]

jossk1990:
■■■■■■ myself at Iain’s post as that was my first thoughts as well

plus one

[ian_g]

shuttlespanker:
if you kept up with the traffic, as you said, the driver of Lorry A is a ■■■■■■■■ (Ian G perhaps?) for not reading the situation correctly

Don’t call me names.

Perhaps the driver of Lorry A rightly considers that the car driver should have ‘read the situation’ and gone in behind Lorry A by using the relatively good manoeuvrability of his car to slow behind Lorry A, before joining having given way to the motorway - not the other way around.

Also allowing Lorry B to re-enter L1 without having someone move in to his blind spot and sit there. Perhaps if he’d read the situation, he’d know that lorries have blind spots and its not a good idea to be there.

If he’s so bothered about stopping distances that he’s got to rely on the car beeping at him, why did he enter the path of a wagon by only four car lengths?

Does Lorry A not have the right to maintain a safe distance?

[tachograph]

From the way I’m reading the post you’ve done nothing wrong, you was unfortunate to meet a lorry driver who thinks that lorries have some God give right to the road.

It does sound as if you may have been able to save yourself some grief by pulling into lane 2 or 3 and overtaking the other vehicles and this may have been a better option, if it was a safe option.

Having said that I certainly can’t see that you did anything wrong.

As for what you should say to your boss, as I said it doesn’t sound like you did anything wrong but it does sound as though you could have avoided the situation by overtaking the slower vehicles, so perhaps that’s something to think about saying.

Having said that, we haven’t seen the vieos and have no way of knowing the situation regarding other traffic ec’t.

As for what Ian said, I’m failing to see where in the OPs post there’s anything to suggest that he never joined the motorway correctly, just because his presence eventually slowed down another vehicle doesn’t put him in the wrong.

[punchy_dan]

Next time go full bore straight to lane 3 cutting over the hard shoulder forget the slip then turn off at the last min like all the others do and you will never see what anyone else dose at you.

[tango_boy]

Dan Punchard:
Next time go full bore straight to lane 3 cutting over the hard shoulder forget the slip then turn off at the last min like all the others do and you will never see what anyone else dose at you.

LOLS

[ian_g]

tachograph:
As for what Ian said, I’m failing to see where in the OPs post there’s anything to suggest that he never joined the motorway correctly, just because his presence eventually slowed down another vehicle doesn’t put him in the wrong.

Not going to go all TruckNet Incident Investigation Branch because we don’t have have the full facts but I’m basing my position on the following -

osmium:
Friday I join the mway, I only stay on for one junction and it is a busy section so I stay in the inside lane for the three miles doing the prevailing speed of that lane.

Now we don’t know how busy the road is but the very fact this guy wants to stay in one lane for three miles just because he’s coming off stood out as a terrible decision. Compounded by the fact that there are lorries there, each of whom wants to maintain a safe distance.

The traffic caused him to slow, that doesn’t put him in the wrong, but the fact he may have had a clear lane to find and get out of there would probably explain the other guy’s frustration.

I’m not at all suggesting he’s in the wrong. What I said is that he joined and got in the way. And if he wants to drive better in the future, a big part of that would be not putting himself in a situation where he’s forced to slow down traffic he’s only just merged in front of.

Same as if people overtake and pull in to come off.

Just demonstrates a lack of consideration. You’d be hard pushed going to court and finding something wrong but it’s not good driving either.

[mataos32]

Ian G:

tachograph:
As for what Ian said, I’m failing to see where in the OPs post there’s anything to suggest that he never joined the motorway correctly, just because his presence eventually slowed down another vehicle doesn’t put him in the wrong.

Not going to go all TruckNet Incident Investigation Branch because we don’t have have the full facts but I’m basing my position on the following -

osmium:
Friday I join the mway, I only stay on for one junction and it is a busy section so I stay in the inside lane for the three miles doing the prevailing speed of that lane.

Now we don’t know how busy the road is but the very fact this guy wants to stay in one lane for three miles just because he’s coming off stood out as a terrible decision. Compounded by the fact that there are lorries there, each of whom wants to maintain a safe distance.

The traffic caused him to slow, that doesn’t put him in the wrong, but the fact he may have had a clear lane to find and get out of there would probably explain the other guy’s frustration.

I’m not at all suggesting he’s in the wrong. What I said is that he joined and got in the way. And if he wants to drive better in the future, a big part of that would be not putting himself in a situation where he’s forced to slow down traffic he’s only just merged in front of.

Same as if people overtake and pull in to come off.

Just demonstrates a lack of consideration. You’d be hard pushed going to court and finding something wrong but it’s not good driving either.

+1

[tachograph]

Ian G:
Now we don’t know how busy the road is but the very fact this guy wants to stay in one lane for three miles just because he’s coming off stood out as a terrible decision. Compounded by the fact that there are lorries there, each of whom wants to maintain a safe distance.

The traffic caused him to slow, that doesn’t put him in the wrong, but the fact he may have had a clear lane to find and get out of there would probably explain the other guy’s frustration.

I’m not at all suggesting he’s in the wrong. What I said is that he joined and got in the way. And if he wants to drive better in the future, a big part of that would be not putting himself in a situation where he’s forced to slow down traffic he’s only just merged in front of.

Same as if people overtake and pull in to come off.

Just demonstrates a lack of consideration. You’d be hard pushed going to court and finding something wrong but it’s not good driving either.

As you say we don’t know how clear the other lanes were.

On the whole I agree with what you’ve said in this post, but your original post was quite a lot harsher

[ian_g]

tachograph:
On the whole I agree with what you’ve said in this post, but your original post was quite a lot harsher

You should see me when someone does it to me

[osmium]

Thanks guys for the comments.

I guess the one I’ll take away is being in the blind spot of the lorry that wanted to pull in.

I usually stay in lane one at that point as lanes 3 and 4 tend to mostly be so full of cars that they drive up each others bottoms and then emergency brake to a stop - regularly you see that the car that shoots from in front of you to lanes 2/3/4 and back for the next junction ends up 10 cars behind you.

I don’t know what caused the lorry in front to brake, traffic is often stop start.

If I was doing a longer run and the outer lanes were running smoothly I’d make progress over to them.

As behind the ■■■ transporter were nose to tail lorries and the slip road I’d come in off letting me merge at the prevailing motorway speed, before the lorry in front braked and slowed me and me ■■■ down I don’t think there was another realistic gap.

As I say thanks for the comments, that’ll be enough to discuss with FM the morrow I’m sure. He likes to ‘raise issues’ but doesn’t really bust your nut. Must be really expensive in downtime, etc, time off work, investigation etc when someone does have an accident so he’s only doing his duty I guess. Our H&S person is the complete opposite, won’t let us ■■■■ without a full risk assessment and sign off from the MD.

Nice to see 80% of comments objective and a twunt in between, you drivers must be made of the same normal / ■■■■ ratio of most of the rest of the population!

[ian_g]

Where is the twunt?

[grumpybum]

osmium:
Maybe an unusual 1st post but directed her from a lad at work to ask…

Friday I join the mway, I only stay on for one junction and it is a busy section so I stay in the inside lane for the three miles doing the prevailing speed of that lane.

Lorry A [removed on request] in in lane 1 and I’m in front of him as I get to the end of the slip, three to four cars ahead of him.

Lorry B is besides lorry A, with his cab about level with me, in lane 2 and lorry C three to four car lengths ahead of me in lane 1.

So I join lane 1. Lorry C dabs the brakes (traffic slows in front?) so I go from the 55-60 mph I’ve joined down to 50-55 mph, solely by taking my foot off the accelerator.

Lorry B at this point decides to indicate left whilst his cab has now passed me as the inside lane is perhaps 10 mph slower than the middle. So I stay at 50-55 mph (54 says the car heads up but I know there is a margin of error) and watch lorry B pass my bonnet and before I can flash him in, lo and behold, he is swinging to lane 1.

Lorry A seems annoyed as the car beeps at me to let the stopping distance / time interval between me and the lorry B go up from 0.1 s (which it was at the point lorry A pulled in) to somewhere between 1 - 2 s (2s being traditional stopping distance gap)?

I judge lorry As annoyance on three facts:
a) Full beams now on
b) Horn permanately on.
c) Lorry A pulling into lane 2, starting to pass me, then indicating left again and using intermittent horn now, once he was level and pushing me onto the hard shoulder!!!

Fleet manager has taken a copy of the video and reported to police, but as part of my ‘updated’ company travel risk assessment / awareness driver improvement I have to give FM a ‘statement’ as to how in future I could improve my driving to prevent being in a similar scenario.

I’ll not say anything sarky like I should have pushed lorry A to go faster, or resisted lorry B putting me on the HS and pushed him into the other carriageway instead, but FFS■■?

May as well put my two penneth in:

Firstly, I also don’t think that you did anything wrong, although a few things that you have said lead me to believe that there may be some things that you don’t understand. And to be fair - that is exactly what you’ve come here to ask!

You say that you decided to stay in the inside lane due to coming off soon, and the motorway being busy. Are you aware that you should always be in the inside lane unless you are overtaking? and then you should use one of the overtaking lanes, and then return to the left. I understand others’ comments on getting the hell out of there as you are driving a vehicle that is far more capable of getting out of harms way, but you were treating the lane like a long filter for your exit, rather than using the lanes appropriately.

It is possible that the overtaking lorry (B) could no longer get back into the left lane because you were now there, and then you slowed, and positioned yourself in his blind spot. Not a reason to cut you up, but he was now stuck out in the second lane with nowhere to go. Again, frustrating, but not a reason for bullying tactics.

You should not need your car to tell you about stopping distances - but at least you are aware.

Your comment about pushing lorry A to go faster? Are you aware that lorries are physically limited to a set speed, usually between 50 and 56mph? So if you are travelling at say 53mph and the lorry is limited to 54mph it is very frustrating trying to get past if you were overtaking and find your self unable to get back in or get past in a decent time-scale. You cannot push a lorry to go faster, because they can’t!

To sum up, well done for coming onto a forum where you may get help and abuse in equal measure For the record, going solely on your own account of things, you did nothing wrong. You may have inadvertently caused some frustration without realising it, but that is no excuse for the intimidating actions of the other drivers. Could you have done anything differently? Maybe you could have slowed your speed a little and joined the carriageway after lorry C?. Remember, you should not join a carriageway if you cannot do so without affecting the speed or direction of the vehicles already on there.

Hope it helps, and good luck with your Fleet Manager

[cliffystephens]

why did i even read this

[stevieboy308]

mirrors to rent, mirrors to rent, anyone want to rent a mirror?