Bath Truck driver had only held his license for five days prior to crash..

[Simian]

Sorry for being defensive, but his whole family is getting abuse and even had a few death threats since the incident!

He's one of the most level headed under 20 year olds I know! he has pretty much, single handedly, kept his parents farm running for the last 3 years, whilst also studying etc, as his parents are trying to save another farm from going under!

 

[Hyburnate]

Sorry for being defensive, but his whole family is getting abuse and even had a few death threats since the incident!

He's one of the most level headed under 20 year olds I know! he has pretty much, single handedly, kept his parents farm running for the last 3 years, whilst also studying etc, as his parents are trying to save another farm from going under!

Sounds like a decent guy

 

[harvey1]

19 seems really young to be trusted with the responsibility of what is effectively a 32 tonne battering ram. Surely you should have at least 5 years of car driving experience at least before you can even be considered for the test.

Same can be said for being able to drive a tractor at 16 really(only restriction being the tractor has to be no wider than 2.5m or something) seems pretty stupid. Although I bet the vast majority of people taking the test will have been driving vehicles from a fairly young age on farms and the like.

 

[Ryan-3]

Personally think everything to do with driving is outdated in this country, not just because of what TopGear have been doing recently either, although they do make a valid point.

Tests need to be more thorough, especially when it comes to things like this.

 

[Scania]

There's quite a few young HGV drivers out there, this isn't a failure in him it's a failure in the system.

Scania himself said he had troubles.

Indeed, I feel the system is at fault here.

Assuming he's learned in an unladen vehicle, he's most likely unaware that at 32t a trucks brakes are extremely prone to fade, as I said, I discovered on the first day I was out on the road earning having passed my then Class 2 (C) licence how a fully freighted truck stops VERY differently to an empty one.
I was very lucky, I cooked my brakes but managed to stop without incident nor injury, without knowing the full facts, granted, I very much fear this lad wasn't so lucky with tragic concequences.

As for cost being a factor, most HGV's used for training are not used for general transport duties, they are just for training,they usually are old trucks that have long past their useful service life lugging full weights around, but ideal for empty training purposes.
In an ideal world, they should be fully freighted so the driver learns how the weight affects the handling and most importantly stopping distances etc.
Alas, we don't live in a perfect world, and very possibly because of this, those four people who died on Monday don't either.

 

[Johno please?]

Sorry for being defensive, but his whole family is getting abuse and even had a few death threats since the incident!

He's one of the most level headed under 20 year olds I know! he has pretty much, single handedly, kept his parents farm running for the last 3 years, whilst also studying etc, as his parents are trying to save another farm from going under!

Thats awful, people can be so retarded.

Apparently the little girl was crossing the road with the grandma? How did she not hear the truck steaming down the road? (not the 4yr old, the grandma i mean)

 

[Outcast]

The law for heavy class vehicles used to be that you had to be at least 21 but you still couldn't get a job because no-one would insure you until you were 25 for insurance purposes.

I have my own n00b truck incident that "but for the grace of God" I would've most probably killed someone and I suspet what was wrong with my vehicle is what's happened to this tipper.

And I so I'll begin my story.

1985 - I had just started "Pr0-Driving" after Holiday relieving for a month (For nothing. Yup ZERO Pay).

I was given a 16 tonne rigid (bag of excrement) and told to "get on with it".

I loaded 10 tonnes (full whack) of manhole covers from Clarksteel and headed west. (Multi-drop)

One of those drops entailed going through Gloucester and I made my way along a road that went down a hill called "Birdlip hill".

Naturally I had never been that way before.

As I travelled down the hill the "Low-Air" warning buzzer started sounding which was a bit puzzling as I hadn't at that point used the brakes all that much.

Dropped a cog to let her rev more to build up the air - but the needle on the gauge wasn't rising.

????

"I'd better start braking" I thought. So I pressed the brake pedal and that's when you discover somethings not right.

The vehicle is not slowing. The brake pedal is firm but it's not slowing.

Now the hill IS getting steeper and the speed has risen to around 55 mph.


"What do I do...What do I do" I kept thinking.. "Do I jump?" - "but what if it hits someone" ?

And YES I DID mouth "Please God, Please God - What do I do - What do I do"?

Hit the dead man and the speed dropped to about 30mph but things started to get smelly - Brake fade - and the speed started to rise again.

Fortunately the road levelled out and the speed dropped to about 20mph. Up ahead there was an offset roundabout - the kind that if you went on the wrong side of the road to you could pass.

Miraculously there was no traffic around so that was the plan. The road went uphill after the roundabout as well.

So I committed to the wrong side of the roundabout.

And Lo and behold a stream of traffic promptly decided to appear coming towards me !

So I yanked the wheel left expecting to fall over and started to go round the roundabout the wrong way.

Yup, at that moment an artic came towards me so I really yanked the wheel hard and drove onto the roundabout from the backside..... And sunk to the axles.

Yup.. Everyone passing looked at me with the expression of "You t***"

I sat there shaking and the Landlord of the pub on the corner ambled over and said "You ok Drive ? You'd be amazed how often that happens" !!


So what was the cause ?

Scroll back a few weeks and I actually had an issue with the brakes late at night which I "discovered" on a level road (actually I was on an empty M62 so it was more like "WoooooooHoooooo, am I going to get the ton" ? but plenty of time to slow down and the rest of the journey back to base was on the A1 which is pretty level).

Naturally I "Booked the vehicle off"

It turned out a single hard plastic brake line to the front right wheel cylinder had "perforated" so although three wheel brakes were working it was still a MASSIVE loss
of stopping power.

So what happened on Birdlip hill ?

EXACTLY THE SAME. The workshops had routed the new pipe too close to the exhaust and it melted....

At the worst possible time.

I bet something similar has happened in this case.

 

[cheesyboy]

Brown trouser truck story

Strewth.... pretty terrifying.

I know Birdlip Hill, a lot of traffic issues there (usually down to things breaking down on the way up, but sometimes serious accidents).

 

[MooMoo444]

Shoulda crashed it. Compo boys!

 

[Indy500]

19 seems really young to be trusted with the responsibility of what is effectively a 32 tonne battering ram. Surely you should have at least 5 years of car driving experience at least before you can even be considered for the test.

Seems insane you can drive something like that with what is at the very most less than 2 years car experience.

The age was dropped to 18 from 21 a few years back.

 

[Westyfield2]

Bath Truck driver had only held his license for five days prior to crash..

A 32ton rigid tipper would indeed be a class C (formerly HGV class 2)

The test that he is shown as passing 5 days before the accident is the C+E.

The truck he was driving only needed a class C.

Therefore it is not the case that he had only been qualified to drive the truck involved for 5 days.

 

[Westyfield2]

It is worth noting that there are not any details yet available about this crash.

Reports immediately afterwards reported people as saying that "The driver was trying to avoid the accident and was sounding his horn". If you look at the photos, there are several lamp posts and garden walls knocked over, as if he was trying to stop the vehicle. It is consequently not unreasonable to speculate that there might have been some form of mechanical failure with the truck. The local rag haven't given any more details on this.

With regards to the road in question, it has a width restriction but not a weight restriction. The signs indicating the width restriction have been knocked down for weeks and still aren’t there today. When the signs are re-erected, you'll see they say "Except for access". It has not yet been revealed where the truck was delivering to. For all we know it could have been the school that is right there which is having loads of building work done?

The road in question is one of the main routes out of the city to the M4. It has recently been turned into a 20MPH limit, which I personally disagree with as it is such a main route and people now spend their entire journey down constantly on the brakes (possible brake fade?) and staring at the speedometer (eyes on the road?).
The problem is that there aren’t any other decent routes:

• Lansdown Hill is useless since you can't get to it because of the Bus Gates. And Lansdown Hill wouldn’t be useful for a HGV always. In the 1960s a cement mixed had brake failure and careered from St Stephens church at the top until it crashed into the then Royal York Hotel at the bottom of Lansdown Road by Broad Street. The driver was killed, and so were the two front seat passengers of the car it landed on (the baby in the back seat survived however).
• The other route is the A46. Ignoring the corners that people keep crashing on as they’re actually fine (the last crash there turned out to be a car with three bald tyres and one flat tyre), you don’t want to go that way anyway. The London Road is a complete nightmare at the best of times. Let alone now the council are digging it up!
  Consequently it can take people 50 minutes to get from one side of Bath to the motorway.

Also, on lots of roads there seems to be lots of completely unsuitable vehicles using them. There’s one in particular (called Freezing Hill lane for any locals) that I keep meeting coaches on, when the road really is only big enough for cars.

 

[MORE SPEED]

BBC are now saying he'd held the correct licence for many months and that the one he took days before was for a more advanced class.

 

[Uther]

I took my C in the lightest smallest truck possible, and my C+E in the smallest lightest truck possible with a flatbed trailer on the back, both in about 2003. Absolutely ridiculous, and I'm pleased I never bothered doing it for a living, as it would have in no way prepared me for driving a heavily laden truck.
I really feel for both the victims and the driver in this case.

 

[Scania]

The test that he is shown as passing 5 days before the accident is the C+E.

The truck he was driving only needed a class C.

Therefore it is not the case that he had only been qualified to drive the truck involved for 5 days.

Noted, the link in my OP made no reference to this fact.

I suspect some kind of brake failure due to either a defect or excessive brake fade (which you wouldn't expect in a built up area where speed and a lot of heavy braking wouldn't be the expected driving style)

I wonder when he passed his class C? - it's not uncommon for new drivers to pass their C, then C+E in relatively quick succession.

Ultimately though, by his age at least, by definition he's very inexperienced in these types of vehicles, "many months" does not make you an expert in this field, it takes years - I've been a professional HGV driver for 18years now, I'm still learning, and don't mind admitting it.

My main pont from my OP stands though, you train for firstly your class C (rigid) then C+E (articulated) licences in unloaded generally smaller vehicles and once you've passed, there's nothing to stop you from driving a 44ton artic with effectively zero idea as to how it will behave in many situations.

 

[icyshore]

Over here in northern ireland we have different rules and have to be laden during tests, its not much but it is a step in the right direction.

http://www.nidirect.gov.uk/index/information-and-services/motoring/buses-lorries-trailers-and-caravans/new-laden-testing-rules-for-driving-test-vehicles.htm

We have also had rules about using boxed in trailers and boddies to make it more realistic.

 

[ChrisD.]

I had to Google CPC, so no, I don't have it.

What roundabout at the bottom of Birdlip Hill?

Edit I saw the year, sorry.

 

[Haggisman]

It is worth noting that there are not any details yet available about this crash.

Reports immediately afterwards reported people as saying that "The driver was trying to avoid the accident and was sounding his horn". If you look at the photos, there are several lamp posts and garden walls knocked over, as if he was trying to stop the vehicle. It is consequently not unreasonable to speculate that there might have been some form of mechanical failure with the truck. The local rag haven't given any more details on this.

With regards to the road in question, it has a width restriction but not a weight restriction. The signs indicating the width restriction have been knocked down for weeks and still aren’t there today. When the signs are re-erected, you'll see they say "Except for access". It has not yet been revealed where the truck was delivering to. For all we know it could have been the school that is right there which is having loads of building work done?

The road in question is one of the main routes out of the city to the M4. It has recently been turned into a 20MPH limit, which I personally disagree with as it is such a main route and people now spend their entire journey down constantly on the brakes (possible brake fade?) and staring at the speedometer (eyes on the road?).
The problem is that there aren’t any other decent routes:

• Lansdown Hill is useless since you can't get to it because of the Bus Gates. And Lansdown Hill wouldn’t be useful for a HGV always. In the 1960s a cement mixed had brake failure and careered from St Stephens church at the top until it crashed into the then Royal York Hotel at the bottom of Lansdown Road by Broad Street. The driver was killed, and so were the two front seat passengers of the car it landed on (the baby in the back seat survived however).
• The other route is the A46. Ignoring the corners that people keep crashing on as they’re actually fine (the last crash there turned out to be a car with three bald tyres and one flat tyre), you don’t want to go that way anyway. The London Road is a complete nightmare at the best of times. Let alone now the council are digging it up!
  Consequently it can take people 50 minutes to get from one side of Bath to the motorway.

Also, on lots of roads there seems to be lots of completely unsuitable vehicles using them. There’s one in particular (called Freezing Hill lane for any locals) that I keep meeting coaches on, when the road really is only big enough for cars.

I used to drive up and down that hill every day, and the first thing I thought when I heard about the crash was what the hell was he doing coming down that hill in the first place - it's extremely steep and twisty, and takes some stopping in a car, never mind a 32 ton truck!

Whilst I appreciate your point about the London Road traffic being a nightmare, it's hardly a valid argument - 4 people died, is that really worth saving 50 minutes?

 

[Fuzz]

I had to Google CPC, so no, I don't have it.

What roundabout at the bottom of Birdlip Hill?

Edit I saw the year, sorry.

I live here and the roundabout at the bottom would have been the crosshands roundabout back then. there is the pub on the corner (toby carvery now, was the cross hands inn back then) which tallies but there is no up hill section after the roundabout and it isn't an offset one either so suspect Outcasts memories are greyed somewhat.

But yea, even after all the road changes, that hill is still a death trap for lots of vehicles.
If it doesn't cook your engine on the way up it sure as hell gets the brakes working (or not!! ) on the way down

 

[Outcast]

Ok.. I thought my memory couldn't of faded that bad so maybe it wasn't exactly Birdlip Hill although that was what I was told.

HERE is the section I was on about.

http://goo.gl/maps/sKhXZ

In all my time trucking since I have never been back there.


Oh.. Interestingly I have been removed from the truckers Facebook group I was in for copy & pasting this in.

I have no idea why !!