I see in Saturday's Telegraph HJ is advocating removing governors from HGVs. I know he's anti speed-hump (mmm...) and anti speed cameras (getting dafter) - but has he taken leave of his senses completely?
I don't want to be on wet roads with 40 ton artics jack-knifing at 90mph - we waste enough time in HGV-instigated hold-ups on the A14 as it is!
{Subject header amended to make less vague - DD}
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I concur.
HGVs to a tractorless lane 1 please. 5.5 miles is my personal best follow-the-HGV-overtaking-the-HGV. I understand that 10miles+ is achievable, well done lorry drivers.
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i havent had time to read saturdays piece yet so will talk in the bigger picture
governed vehicles are dangerous vehicles
just like guns in loonies hands are dangerous
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I don't want to be on wet roads with 40 ton artics jack-knifing at 90mph
Most artics would struggle to reach 70mph on the flat never mind 90mph. This is due to the way that they are geared, don't forget that 56mph is their theoretical governed maximum so they are not made to go much faster than this anyway.
And just as a side note now that I have got my hands on TomTom Navigator 6 Mobile, I find that when using the GPS, my car and the majority of others give roughly a 10% over read on the speedometer compared to the true speed as indicated by the GPS device. Where as my truck (05 reg Merc Actros) sits at 56mph on its limiter, as indicated by the speedo, it is actually an bob on accurate as my GPS reads 56mph too.
So when you are driving your car, and reckoning that the artic in front of you has a dodgy limiter because it appears to be doing over 60mph, it is most likely that it is your speedo in your car that is over reading and you are actually going slower than you think.
And just for the record if you didn't know, truck speedos have to be calibrated every two years by law.
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I too think HJ's response wasn't particularly well thought out. Raising the governed speed of trucks would only move the problem to a higher speed - it wouldn't actually change the overtaking problem.
I don't have a big problem with letting trucks go faster - I don't think there was a large accident problem pre 1988 when governors were brought in - the speed limits have been 60 for a long time, and tachographs keep a record, so you can't sensibly speed as a matter of habit in an HGV and get away with it even if there were no limiter fitted.
What would make a difference would be if some stubborn truck drivers could just ease off the throttle for a few seconds when they see a long term overtake situation developing (It's not difficult!). Despite HJ's comment, it would not cost a driver more than a minute or two in a 9 hour driving day - I can't see how that would ruin a driver's day, it's less than the equivalent of coming up against a red light instead of a green, and I know delivery schedules cannot be set so tightly - if they were, they would be missed on as many days as they were hit, and no-one would keep a contract for long.
Although I didn't drive trucks for a long period of time, and as such I don't have umpteen years worth of experience to call upon, but I did find there was no great time lost in occaisonally letting off the throttle during a long overtake - a few seconds at most.
Number_Cruncher
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Even better would be to shift the bulk of lorry and truck journeys to overnight, including deliveries, which would stop a lot of the congestion we suffer.
Not my idea but that of a friend who has a fleet of delivery vehicles; his problem is that he can't persuade enough of his customers to make it worthwhile.
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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i take it you live in the middle of nowhere then stuarti not like the rest of us where we have shops/warehouses/industrial units/ nearby that dont want/need /cant afford/to work 24 hours a day?
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>>I take it you live in the middle of nowhere then,,>>
No, I live in a seaside resort of more than 80,000 people and just over a mile from the town centre...:-)
I've made the point before that I used to work in Preston when, every morning during the week, I used to be in nose to tail stop-start traffic going into the city centre.
However, come the school holidays and the traffic sailed through.......
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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However, come the school holidays and the traffic sailed through.......
thats the same everywhere in britain ,blame fat lazy mums that feed their children chicken ding not the road hauliers
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blame fat lazy mums thatfeed their children chicken ding not the road hauliers
I would not feed my child a road haulier.
MD
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I would not feed my child a road haulier. MD
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quite right too - lone child would never manage a whole one.
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>>blame fat lazy mums>>
This was in the 1980s and 1990s (no doubt it's still the same) but, in fairness, many of the children live some considerable distance from the schools and would have to cross several very busy roads morning and evening.
Figures for goods vehicle operators up to last year reveal there were more than 100,000 UK operators owning an average of four vehicles each, with a total of 1,746 million tonnes of freight being transported.
This doesn't include white van man or the large number of European based freight operators, many of whom come in and go out of the country via Dover.
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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Even better would be to shift the bulk of lorry and truck journeys to overnight, including deliveries, which would >> stop a lot of the congestion we suffer.
We could adapt this theory but turn it on its head somewhat. Why don't we ban cars from the road during the daytime, so that the trucks can deliver their goods to industry and so that they can replenish the goods on the shelves in the shops without any delays, and then the car drivers can have the freedom of the roads at night time to go about their business.
No I don't think it will happen either!
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>>No I don't think it will happen either!>>
Why not? Most of the big supermarkets where I live have staff working all night stocking the shelves up,as well as the 24-hour opening stores serving a surprising number of customers..:-)
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Surely it has been answered by abobve comments. Most of the commute problem daily is because of the fat lazy mums and their children.
School buses virtually dont exist now, but how many cars would 1 bus take off our roads?
As for deliveries, we all want food etc so its a necessary evil; but if there was a proper system of rail, for bulk deliveries etc and a proper public transport system in place there would be less need for cars and lorries anyway, freeing up the road for those that still want to drive !
But its always too expensive, but cost uis all more in the long run !
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>And just for the record if you didn't know, truck speedos have to be calibrated every two years by law.
Strange then that my 1984 Bedford Turbo horse lorry has passed its plate for the last two years without a working speedo - I do speeds off the rev counter, BTW.
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local yokel, vosa are having a big crackdown on these horseboxes due to lots of them being parked in fields 11 months of the year and ill maintained they are looking to see if you are hire and reward etc and also looking for tachos and driver/service records plus the possibility of you needing an operating licence
To take this one step further i have just made a call and the jist is ,do you go further than 6 miles in any one journey do you make any money or win rossetts etc and do you ever carry friends horses
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>And just for the record if you didn't know, truck speedos have to be calibrated every two years by law.
What I should have made clear in my post is that the tachograph's have to be calibrated every two years by law, and this in turn means that the speedo has to read correctly in the cab. Not so much now, with the advent of the digital age, but before the tachograph and the speedo used to be one single integrated unit.
Local Yokel, I assume that your horsebox is fitted with a tachograph, rather than just a speedo. (It may depend on whether it has always been a horsebox from new). But if it is fitted then presumably you run it for your own private use, rather than for hire and reward, and when you take it for MOT you fill out and sign the relevant tachograph exemption form. Assuming that it has a tachograph fitted it should have at least one calibration sticker inside it (even if it is from 1984 when it was new) and all of the seals still need to be in tact, ie the head seals and gearbox seal.
The fact that your speedo doesn't work is neither here nor there anyway. It isn't part of the MOT test for lorries or cars, and in particular if you notice truck MOT's never have the mileage recorded on the paperwork when they go in for MOT anyway.
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However, come the school holidays and the traffic sailed through.......
So theres the main problem, send the little angels to school all night that'll keep the
little thugs of the streets ;-) And the morning rush hour would be freed up leaving plenty of room for
my big nasty truck
simon
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The answer is for governors to allow up to ten minutes unrestricted speed every hour, so permitting safer and shorter overtaking.
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"The answer is for governors to allow up to ten minutes unrestricted speed every hour, so permitting safer and shorter overtaking."
And the end result would be ten minutes of madness followed by 50 minutes of exactly the behaviour that is being complained about in here. Human nature would take its course, I think.
V
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