Grr, artic drivers...

DRZ

DRZ

DRZ

Soldato
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Just got a call from one of my best matesto say that as he was overtaking an artic in a 50mph stretch of motorway, as he got level with the cab it just smashed into the side of him.

He span through 180 degrees and went "under" the front of the artic and then flipped over, rolled and then slid along on his drivers door, smashing into the armco on the hard shoulder and slid to a halt on its side.

He has just been put under an anaesthetic and is having at least some stitches but he was at least talking enough to speak to me on the phone about it.

My guess is that it was probably a left-hand drive artic from the continent which simply cannot see what is going on alongside them in lane 2.

I try and get past artics as quickly as possible but it seems like the speed limit on the heavily-enforced stretch of motorway he was on prevented him from doing so.

Grr! I am glad he is OK. If he had been killed I would have been pretty devastated.

As I was posting this he called me back to say that the lorry simply drove off and no witnesses reported any distinguishing marks/logos and nobody got the number plate :( He has a cut up arm and is bruised a bit but other than that he is alright thankfully!

EDIT: Grr, can a passing mod remove my typo from the title? Didn't mean to type arctic at all :/
 
If hes lucky they can find the number from the millions of cameras they no doubt have set up to catch speeders. Then again if its is a forgeign truck there isnt much thats gonna happen anyway.

I always get out of the way of foreign trucks on the motorway for exacly this reason, ive had a couple of close calls myself with them just pulling out in the second lane to overtake, no signals no nothing.

Hope your mate is ok.
 
I too have taken to giving foreign trucks a wide berth after hearing stories about their cavalier attitude to driving. All the best to your mate, hope they can trace the driver.
 
My old man got swiped by an Italian artic at a roundabout a couple of years back. About £1500 damage to the rear quarter of his Volvo V70. Driver actually stopped and they somehow conquered the language barrier and swapped details. UK Insurance company somehow couldn't/didn't follow it up with the Italian insurers and they tried to knock out his no claims for it!

All foreign trucks should be made to have a full set of blind spot mirrors and the vehicle and insurance details logged when they enter the country. I suspect some of our fellow Europeans wouldn't think twice about implementing something similar for RHD trucks if they don't already.

Driving around on foreign plates appears to be the easiest way to get away with motoring crimes ever. Not as if there's any Police around, just the electronic surveillance state.
 
Similar thing happened to me the other night on the way home from work. A lorry was doing a steady 50 on a A road with a car behind, then a foreign lorry and then me. The first car went to overtake. The same with me but as i was about half way past the foreign lorry he just pulled out. Slammed on my brakes and had to go onto the dirt on the other side of the road. What was even more scary was that the lorry had to go on the wrong side of a central reservation to make the overtake. I always thought lorries were restricted to a certain mph or doesn't this apply to foreign lorries?

To make it even worse i eventually overtook him then kept a steady sixty as i knew a speed camera was coming up. He was tailgating me for a good minute before trying to overtake me coming up to a round about. I had enough by then and just planted my foot and went. Never seen anything like it in my life. Too add more spice this happened at night time with a slight fog. When he overtook that lorry he was judging it by pure luck.
 
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Foreign or not, the guy is a supposed professional. :mad:

Tossers like these give the vast majority of HGV drivers a very bad name imo.


No indicators? :rolleyes:
The first thing to do in an artic is to indicate & then sit back & wait for any movement from your blind spots (of which, there is many), then he could have used his mirrors (most are electric) to double check, and then finally, slowly pull out.

Sadly, all too often I see a truck start to pull out well before any indication, if any at all.


A Polish driver was telling me the other day how in Poland, you do not actually have to drive an artic to gain an artic licence! - Why would he lie is this were not the case I wonder? - Scary if true, not to mention it would explain his inability to "Blind reverse" !


If his cab hit your mate, there is no way he would not have realised he's had a bump, had it been the trailer, then its very possible he'd be none the wiser - especially if he was watching his DVD player rather than his mirrors! :mad:

I Hope your mates ok, and a sincere sorry from this trucker. :(
 
He span 180 degrees and was headlights-to-headlights with the cab. There is NO WAY that he didn't know what he had done. Makes me mad that he just ****** off :mad:
 
Did the motorway cameras capture the incident? - give the relevant Police force a call.

Chances of them tracking him down are slim and looking for a left hand drive foreign truck with cab damage would highlight pretty much every one!
 
On my travels it's a rare day that I don't see a foreign HGV on the hard shoulder with a bent car just in front of it. Not that big an assumption that it's always the foreign lorry causing the damage...

Although I did see a DHL (Uk registered) container lorry pull right in front of a van yesterday.
 
That's shocking. I'm always wary of foreign trucks and usually if I can I try and over take them by going across 2 lanes (i.e. in the outside over taking lane 3). In road works I just wait for them to end I've seen dodgy things like this happen before - in a 50mph stretch I'd be too worried about a) getting caught speeding b) not being seen as usually the lanes are quite narrow too. c) not being able to over take quickly enough with regards to a).

I can't believe he carried on driving - surely you'd notice you hit something even in a big truck no? I mean dammit, you should be able to overtake safely without having your life flash before your eyes!

I'm sorry to hear about your mate Martin - at least he's "ok". I hope they have some CCTV footage or something. What did the police say?
 
Foreign HGV drivers seem to have a habit of using slip roads and outer lanes of roundabouts as laybys round here. Sorry to hear about your mate, really hope he gets justice as this happens all too often.
 
R124/LA420 said:
Foreign or not, the guy is a supposed professional. :mad:

Tossers like these give the vast majority of HGV drivers a very bad name imo.
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Indeed, let's not tar them all with the same brush but there's no doubt there are some total *ahem* on the roads.

A few years back a 7.5-tonner did exactly the same thing and moved over into a car in front of me near the M69/M1 junction. After giving the car a hefty swipe, he just carried on as if nothing happened.

I made a point of catching up with the car driver and we bothed stopped to swap details. I ended up giving evidence in court as a witness.

Language monsieur!

EDIT: Apologies, didn't realise that counted as a sweary :)
 
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5th Gear did a demonstration of the blind spot of left hand drive trucks a few years back and it scared the living day lights out of me. But the important thing is everyone is ok and only a car got damaged
 
foriegn drivers all seem like lunatics,

i'm assuming they dont come with limiters like british trucks do?

had a tractor unit hussle me out the way on the a92 last night. I was sitting at an indicated 90 and he was still pulling away.

bloody foreigners
 
i don't understand why they're allowed to drive over here, for example;

A Polish driver was telling me the other day how in Poland, you do not actually have to drive an artic to gain an artic licence! - Why would he lie is this were not the case I wonder? - Scary if true, not to mention it would explain his inability to "Blind reverse" !
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Surely the point of a licence is that everyone is meant to have a minium level of competence to drive whatever they are driving. If you can get a licence to drive an artic without actually driving one, then that all sounds a little bit backwards to me. And that licence should not be valid in our country.

I used to feel very safe around trucks on the motorway, despite my car being tiny next to them, i felt quite safe trundling along in the inside lane between two trucks.. but now we've got these unqualified idiots behind the wheel, i don't :(
 
R124/LA420 said:
A Polish driver was telling me the other day how in Poland, you do not actually have to drive an artic to gain an artic licence! - Why would he lie is this were not the case I wonder? - Scary if true, not to mention it would explain his inability to "Blind reverse" !
Click to expand...

I have also been told the same thing by a polish person which is very scary if true. He also said to me that us English people can just go over to Poland do some sort of test and exchange our licence with a polish one which allows for HGV driving. The biggest thing i have ever driven is a ford mondeo estate :P

Not all LHD drivers are bad though. I get a lot of trucks from holland at my workplace and they seem very careful about whats around them. (I guess their cabs are set up for english roads) They even give me the nod with a indicator when it's safe to overtake.
 
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adam cool dude said:
I have also been told the same thing by a polish person which is very scary if true. He also said to me that us English people can just go over to Poland do some sort of test and exchange our licence with a polish one which allows for HGV driving. The biggest thing i have ever driven is a ford mondeo estate :P
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We need an OC/UK Motors investigation into this.

adam cool dude said:
Not all LHD drivers are bad though. I get a lot of trucks from holland at my workplace and they seem very careful about whats around them. (I guess their cabs are set up for english roads) They even give me the nod with a indicator when it's safe to overtake.
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I agree, not all - just most of them!

I assume you mean right hand drive? if not, then no, they are not set up for our roads alas.

I'd be extremely wary of taking "the nod" from a foreign trucker - what we interpret that to mean over here could well mean something else to them.....

Only overtake an HGV when you can see that its safe to do so.
 
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