Wide load escort vehicles - powers to stop

UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS THE UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUM (INTERACTIVE)
1

Do the WLEV’s have the legal powers to stop traffic :question: just curious that is all as followed one today and the ■■■■■■ van when the convoy approached the roundabout, it went round it and brought traffic to a holt to stop the rear wheel trailers slamming into the side of a idiot car drivers.

car drivers following in the pic (not shown) didnt seem to understand what he was trying to do and why, hold traffic back on the dual to give the trucks plenty of room, there were 2 trucks in convoy carrying matching bridge parts. but always throught that traffic cops were normally involved if traffic needed bringing to a stop? could be wrong, as cars on the roundabout were probably wondering what the silly van was doing stopping them :exclamation: :unamused: :unamused: “oh a big truck”

2

Probably not allowed to but you’ll no doubt find that a lot of these WLEV’s are driven by those on power trips and think they can do what they like on the road. I was on the A69 running at full 44t going down the sharp down hill bit after the petrol station between the two cameras and one of these vans came screaming round the bend and swerved in front of me and stopped dead causing me to seriously stomp on the brakes. Guy was a ■■■■■■ and I told him so as I drove around him to pull onto the wide open bit. What ever happened to a couple flashes of the lights to get my attention? No lets just pull into his path and stop because I am oh so cool with all my look at me lights flashing

3

Unless I’m mistaken, and I think it’s in the Highway Code, only a Police officer has the power to halt traffic.

Ken.

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Quinny:
Unless I’m mistaken, and I think it’s in the Highway Code, only a Police officer has the power to halt traffic.

Ken.

VOSA also have the power to stop.

Then there are school crossing guards, they can stop traffic albeit while on foot rather than in a vehicle. Those blokes who operate the Stop/Go boards at roadworks can also stop traffic.

HATO’s while not having the same powers to stop as VOSA or the police can bring traffic to a halt, or at least slow it down by a rolling road block to remove debris from the carriageway for instance. When I did a ride along with the HATO’s I also leant they can stop moving vehicles but have to get permission from the police to do so, say in the case of spotting something loose on a vehicle which could be a danger.

There are a lot of people who can stop traffic but I’m not sure about ■■■■■■ vehicle. As the police handed the ■■■■■■ work over to them I suspect they must be allowed to perform the actions Cruise Control described.

5

Quinny:
Unless I’m mistaken, and I think it’s in the Highway Code, only a Police officer has the power to halt traffic.

Ken.

Policeman, soldier, traffic warden and a lollypop man can all legally stop traffic. When it comes to traffic, a traffic warden has just as much power as plod. Don’t know about escorts tho.

6

Coffeeholic:

Quinny:
Unless I’m mistaken, and I think it’s in the Highway Code, only a Police officer has the power to halt traffic.

Ken.

VOSA also have the power to stop.

Then there are school crossing guards, they can stop traffic albeit while on foot rather than in a vehicle. Those blokes who operate the Stop/Go boards at roadworks can also stop traffic.

HATO’s while not having the same powers to stop as VOSA or the police can bring traffic to a halt, or at least slow it down by a rolling road block to remove debris from the carriageway for instance. When I did a ride along with the HATO’s I also leant they can stoop moving vehicles but have to get permission from the police to do so, say in the case of spotting something loose on a vehicle which could be a danger.

one of these with a lollipop stick? if you dont stop your windscreen gets peppered…

:wink: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

7

Here in GERMANY the BF3 vehicles do and it works
also many have also a police ■■■■■■

this is a BF3 VEHICLE for those who have not seen one

link–1

link-2

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An abnormal load ■■■■■■ vehicle does NOT have the power to force any traffic to stop , and no legal power to give any instructions to other road users. they can , like any other road user,including the blue light emergency services breach any part of the road traffic acts if it is needed in the interests of safety, however if an accident occurs or they are spotted do so in a situation that the authorities feel it was uneeded they are liable for prosecution.

so yes they can park their van across the opposite lane to attempt to block you, if the wide load coming the other way that you cant see yet needs your lane to get round a bend, in the same way you can use your car to stop traffic going round a blind bend if there was a child who had been knocked down and was lying in the road just out of sight. But they have no power to stop anyone who tries to get past at all.

9

basically it’s a cop out (excuse the pun) by the authorities - they no longer want to/are able to ■■■■■■ loads, so allow private firms or individuals to do so, working under their guidelines which include that they are not allowed to stop traffic

the authorities know full well that escorts regularly have to do so, but it keeps their arses covered if anything goes wrong in doing so - it’s a sort of turn-a-blind-eye until sumat goes ■■■■-up kind of arrangement :grimacing:

10

but you’ll no doubt find that a lot of these WLEV’s are driven by those on power trips and think they can do what they like on the road.

Most I know, are ex heavy haulage drivers or experienced steersmen, I have no doubt there are a few cowboys within the industry, but you get that with any trade or any sector within this industry (some of the posters on here are evidence to that) , many STGO configurations mean that the vehicles need to use lines through bends/roundabouts that are not obvious to those who dont use those vehicles, and sometimes even on straight roads unusual manouveres need to be taken ( some bridges at certain weights you need to use the outside lane, or for those in the know . the need to do a “Nich Flick” to bring a certain type of trailer back into line )

There was a few decent ■■■■■■ companies who wanted the whole industry licenced and regulated, and if licenced they could have been given powers under the traffic act similar to what happens in Germany and Holland, but as usual … UK PLC went for the cheap option

11

i often see one ■■■■■■ vehicle ,escorting more than one load ,i understood you had to have one ■■■■■■ per load ,or has that changed

12

Also just to make a point on how unregulated the ab load ■■■■■■ industry is, when this first was talked about coming in we seriously looked at doing it. Using experienced heavy haulage drivers and steersmen, providing adequate training including the legal responsibilies, first aid , providing PMR radios, equiping the vehicles so that the ■■■■■■ driver could night out, providing and carrying basics like cones, fire extinguisher , heavy duty jacks, extra marker, lights bulbs, cables, beacons, shackles, in fact anything we could think of that en route may become needed to get that load as far as possible to a safe place and out of trouble if a problem arised.

We also factored in the days when the load did not move, and having to pay our lad(s) to sit, the days waiting for jobs, ab loads are not that common. we factored in the cost of making the vehicles visible by chevrons and beacons. and all that is without the usual business standing costs of Public liabilty, office costs , fuel, NI, etc etc etc

It all fell down when I got a quote from a guy who had just started doing in our area ( I called him pretending to be a client looking for an abload ■■■■■■ to see what was being charged)

The numbers simply did not add up, to do a proper job we could not do it at the price he quoted not even close

13

Rikki-UK:
Also just to make a point on how unregulated the ab load ■■■■■■ industry is, when this first was talked about coming in we seriously looked at doing it. Using experienced heavy haulage drivers and steersmen, providing adequate training including the legal responsibilies, first aid , providing PMR radios, equiping the vehicles so that the ■■■■■■ driver could night out, providing and carrying basics like cones, fire extinguisher , heavy duty jacks, extra marker, lights bulbs, cables, beacons, shackles, in fact anything we could think of that en route may become needed to get that load as far as possible to a safe place and out of trouble if a problem arised.

We also factored in the days when the load did not move, and having to pay our lad(s) to sit, the days waiting for jobs, ab loads are not that common. we factored in the cost of making the vehicles visible by chevrons and beacons. and all that is without the usual business standing costs of Public liabilty, office costs , fuel, NI, etc etc etc

It all fell down when I got a quote from a guy who had just started doing in our area ( I called him pretending to be a client looking for an abload ■■■■■■ to see what was being charged)

The numbers simply did not add up, to do a proper job we could not do it at the price he quoted not even close

Typical. You try to do the job properly, and you get undercut by a guy with a ford fiesta and a single beacon.

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Typical. You try to do the job properly, and you get undercut by a guy with a ford fiesta and a single beacon.

It was for us , a choice between investing the equity in our house in a business , or buying a nicer house, if it had been any where near acceptable we could have done both, but the rates out there are stupid, unsustainable and in all honesty a danger.
we now have a nicer house, we may have been able to do both if this industry would look just for once beyond base price… but they wont.

15

if someone has more bussiness sense than another man it dosn’t mean he’s an undercutting cowboy, it means he’s got more bussiness sense!
i doubt thats theres anything in road haulage or any other trade for that matter where you can go out buy new tackle and everything you need from scratch, factor those costs into your prices and get anywhere near close to being able to compete with established firms in the same line of work!
that is why you should always reckon on making a loss on paper in your first year.
not talking down to anyone but it’s a pet hate of mine when people who can do a job efficiently get labled as cowboys by people that can’t.

16

Paul I note your reply , and there are some grains of truth in there.
It is worth noting however that this was a virtually new industry at the time, with private escorts taking over from the Police, so everyone was in near enough the same boat.

We certainly were not looking to recoup all our outlay in the first year as you say thats just silly. our costings were over the expected lifetime of the equipment. The reason we walked away was that the feasable return on our investment (ROI) on the rates that were being quoted was so small that the money was better invested elsewhere, in my (rather small) mind that makes me a better business man than the person who was charging rates that did not give any where near an adequate ROI.

17

d4c24a:
i often see one ■■■■■■ vehicle ,escorting more than one load ,i understood you had to have one ■■■■■■ per load ,or has that changed

There are no definative rules on the ratio of AIls to escorts to my knowledge (as this thread attests). It will depend very much upon the nature of the loads (ie wide, heavy, high or a mixture of), the sort of roads etc. My experience is that Police are generally OK with 2 Abnormal Loads to one ■■■■■■ vehicle - keeping a convoy of 2+ together on any roads other than Motorways is otherwise virtually impossible. I’ve escorted 3 x 4.5m loads on the Motorway only because the start and finish of the journey was a short distance off the Motorway and managable. Another job I did actually had 4 escorts (2 Police) for a single Abnormal Load (Cat 777F Dumper) due to it’s size/weight (125T) and the nature of the roads into the mine and the villages on the route.

18

As an ex traffic copper, HGV driver and ab load driver I hope I can put this one to rest.

The authorities look upon abnormal load drivers in the same way as HATO’s. Do what you want, aslong as it’s safe and not something the police wouldn’t do.

As an example, we had a wide load out last night and we stopped the traffic god knows how many times off the motorway and when your on the motorway you can block lanes or start a rolling roadblock shortly before the junction that the truck is going to join the motorway, to enable slower moving traffic. (Bearing in mind the load might hit the top of the slip at 20mph with running traffic at 4 times that)

There is a code of practice in place (If you want to call it that) that advises the best ways to carry out procedures, but you’ll never get a copper ■■■■■■■ a wide load driver for stopping or driving down the road the wrong way.

Running reds is acceptable in certain circumstances, blocking a roundabout is dangerous but perfectly acceptable - The point of a wide load vehicle is to warn and protect the load so having someone jump inbetween you defeats the point of you being there.

Personally, I think it’s crazy to go out with less than 2 wide load vehicles due to the fact most folk these days drive with their eyes shut, but we find that people pay more attention to a wide load car rather than a van so we always insist on sending 2 or more cars even if it does cost us that little bit more.

But the moral of the story is, there is no official authority, but as we work in close contact with the police and other agencies it’s extremely unlikely to ever get done. But to be honest, 7/10 loads are done with police assistance.

With regards to “one wide load vehicle per wagon” it all depends on the circumstances. As an example, a certain police force has given us authority to run 12 trucks down the M6 with only 4 wide load cars and two traffic cars in July.

And all of the above is coming from someone in the job, an ex traffic cop and my mate who is a sergent/part time wide load driver so there should be some truth in it! :slight_smile:

19

. :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: Welcome stagedriver :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: .

stagedriver:
As an ex traffic copper, HGV driver and ab load driver

Good to have to someone with your credentials join us and I hope you will stay with us and join in with other discussions and queries.

I notice that you are from Scotland… not related to Angus Nairn are you :question: :wink: :wink: :laughing:

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Hi stagedriver,

It’s always good to have qualified/experienced folks join us, so please become a regular poster.

The majority of us would welcome your input. :smiley: