It's a sort of rule and sub-rule situation.

The rule is that if there's an obstruction on your side of the road, before pulling onto the other side of the road to pass it, you must give way to oncoming traffic.

If you're going uphill in such a situation and need to pull out to pass an obstruction, the oncoming traffic still has right of way but the Highway Code advises them to give way to traffic coming uphill where possible.

I once knew someone who had merrily misinterpreted that rule for years behind the wheel and had always driven believing that traffic going downhill had priority! Though wrong, this actually makes sense, since it's more likley to have trouble stopping, especially in the days when brake fade was a big problem on heavy vehilces.

Edited by a900ss on 09/12/2012 at 20:52

Autos?? The rot started with synchronised gears...

I wasn't sure how far service brakes had come on. I was given to understand that the service brakes were pretty much emergency use only and that rearders/compression brakes were the favoured means to control speed. But that might be out of date now.

Oh boy you sensible lot would soon be put in your places by the modern equivalent of HGV driving instructors.

As i get told regularly on one of the lorry forums i frequent and poke fun at the new methods, the modern way to drive is brakes to slow and gears to go and no other, makes no difference whether the vehicle weighs 800kg or 44000kgs, apparently.

I'm quite serious here, in HGV driver training and testing there are a few things missing, no emergency controlled stop (did that on your car test, just the same), no gearchanging exercise, and the roadcraft method of brakes to slow gears to go means you approach a junction in top gear using the brakes to slow down and select an appropriate gear to move away when needed....yes this is true i am not kidding you, they are not taught to use appropriate gearing and maximise auxiliary retarders going downhill.

Apparently modern lorry braking systems are so good that using the vehicles inbuilt retarder isn't required, the brakes will cope, well they will on a trainers empty vehicle and to be fair they will in most cases on the road, but firstly if something goes wrong you're already overheated and secondly its not how lorry drivers drive...in control at all times and that means in an appropriate gear at the right revs, and BTSGTG causes excessive unecessary wear on the whole braking system..

That'll be why most lorry makers still fit a maximium engine braking system to their auto boxes then, which automatically downshifts to the lowest/highest revving gear automatically when the retarder is used, the makers don't incorporate this because it sounds good or to please old blighters like me, its done because they deem it necessary.

As you might expect pointing out or asking what might happen should the ONE trailer brake application air line burst and the untrained (properly) driver already has overheated tractor unit brakes because he hasn't been using retarder and appropriate gears is met with silence.

Add to this that some 25/30 years ago the third, auxiliarly, fully independent braking system on our vehicles, the blue line, was phased out to make us compatible with the EU masterstate's 2 line system, around the same time we went from a 12.5 hour max working day to 15 cos thats safer too..:)

I'm very sorry for this very long post ( i could go on.;) but i've been driving lorries full time for some 36 years and i'm concerned by the skills not being taught to our new drivers, they really are being taught to pass tests and not drive lorries properly, the lorry is driving itself and they are not controlling it, the age of the steering wheel attendant has come.

Phew, back to the OP, i was taught when i learned to drive at the tender age of 8 that the unwritten rule of the road was 'give way to uphil traffic'.