is it me..? or do Lorry / Truck Drivers drive like NUTTERS?

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I do it for a living and cover a lot of mileage a year, like anything else you get good drivers and you get terrible drivers. If i had a pound for every time a car driver did something daft, i would be very, very rich.

That said, the industry has some complete goons driving hgv's who shouldnt be let on the road, i see the OP's point of view but we shouldnt all be tarred with the same brush. Looks like you got one of the bad ones and he should be shot, without trial.
 
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Truckers have to drive like nutters, only a nutter would do the job in the first place! :p

Virdi said:
If Truck / Lorry drivers are so good... Why do they all ways drive right up close behind eachother on the motorways?

The only good thing I've ever seen truck/lorry drivers do is..... Once a lorry has overtaken another lorry in the slow lane..... the lorry in the slow lane often flashes.... the lorry that has just over taken in the middle lane.... to let him/her know that it's now safe for them to pull back into the slow lane...

Has anyone ever seen this?

Truckers drive right upto the vehicle infront before they pull out to stop the mindless muppets in cars who berate them for travelling for miles & miles whilst they overtake.

They overtake slower vehicles for the same reasons any other driver does, they want to get past!

Much better to flash a "ticker" in than to have the rear of his vehicle clip you as he miss judges his length as he's passing......

I see this quite a bit. ;)

Anybody who tells me truckers are bad drivers need just borrow my keys & rig and blind reverse it round a bend for me, then, just then I may listen to them. ;)
 
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You can't say all truck drives are muppets, because that would imply 100% of them and surely you cant suggest that truck drivers frequenting the OCUK forums display such phenotypes ;)

However, I think a majority of them take liberties from the fact that they drive such monsterous trucks, the vast majority of them owned by their company.

My pet hates include, signal and manoeuvre, dont worry about the car sitting next to you in the middle lane, they just have to move out otherwise you will just crunch them. Also the tail gating, I have seen enough trauma victims now to realise the dangers of such a stupid practice, slipstreaming or not!

And yes, yesterday there were a huge number of 'time critical' HGV drivers on the road who were obviously under the impression their weight would save them under braking etc.

Yes you don't all drive like muppets but a majority of you are up there with the World's finest; BMW drivers :D

P.S. Just because you can reverse around a corner means nothing when you are trying to judge braking times/distances in a machine that has the momentum of about 20 cars...go figure.
 
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R124/LA420 said:
Anybody who tells me truckers are bad drivers need just borrow my keys & rig and blind reverse it round a bend for me, then, just then I may listen to them. ;)

so u can reverse around a blind corner so what doesnt mean your any safer in a straight line does it?

I use the M6 everyday and I reckon out of 10 accidents 8 involve trucks... the goverment enforce tach-ometers but not all wagons use or take notice of them, in addition to this they should have a new monitor that detects the distance between them and the next object based on speed, if they get too close they get done for it...

I was rear ended last year by a car, luckily I was in the 3rd lane if I hadnt had been theres a chance it could have been a HGV and I wouldnt be here... I hate truckers on motorways...
 
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The Dual carriageway i travel on is having a lot of roadworks done to it at the moment. Some weeks i travel on it the signs are up for 50mph speed limit instead of 70. So i stick to these limits, but some lorry drivers cant seem to do that. When i am on my bike they are just way to close to me, Kinda scary to look behind you to see something as big as that so close to you.
 
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arfur said:
I use the M6 everyday and I reckon out of 10 accidents 8 involve trucks.
...apart from that statement being a blatant lie, you could also say almost 10 out of 10 involve cars...so what's your point?
cars outnumber trucks by an approximate ratio of 42:1 in this country.
to say 80% of all motorway accidents were caused, or even involve, an HGV is absolute rubbish.
arfur said:
I use the M6 everyday and I reckon out of 10 accidents 8 involve trucks... the goverment enforce tach-ometers but not all wagons use or take notice of them..
wrong.
the percentage of major tacho infringements is minute.
all tachos are checked as are vehicles.
if you don't play ball, you get shut down.
simple as that.
arfur said:
I was rear ended last year by a car, luckily I was in the 3rd lane if I hadnt had been theres a chance it could have been a HGV and I wouldnt be here... I hate truckers on motorways...
lucky for you that your incident fell into the 20% of accidents that don't involve HGV's.
 
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Don
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They do drive like nutters, but I still stare in awe every time I see them reverse park into a back alley etc, trailer in tow. That must take ages to master.
 
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Taxi drivers annoy me. They try and bully you to go faster so then I split the speed limit in half and do 15 in a 30 and 20 in a 40 :D

Kinda ruins their tip for getting the person to their destination faster. ;)
 
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arfur said:
so u can reverse around a blind corner so what doesnt mean your any safer in a straight line does it?

I agree. The skill and concentration required to reverse a huge articulated truck into a tiny alley way etc. is impressive, but it doesn't stop *some* truck drivers doing stupid things out on the roads. Indicating and pulling out simultaneously on a dual carriageway has been mentioned and I've had to brake very hard to avoid being clipped numerous times when a truck driver has done this. Fair enough it must be difficult to judge how long the vehicle is, but surely if in doubt then they shouldn't pull out, but instead they resort to bully tactics to try and make a miniscule bit more progress.
 
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I gotta say, i prob do 30-40k miles a year, generally HGV's or White van drivers dont really bother me, my annoyances are the Pic-up drivers and 7.5 tonners, they are idiots, they use the outside lane and just sit there clogging up the entire motorway.

But i will say, the vast majority of car drivers havent got a clue, lane discipline, poor speed judgement, poor overtaking skills, more often than not its normally a car driver going uber slow in the inside lane forcing a lorry driver out to the middle lane.

Admittedly i drive fast, far too fast on the motorway, but the amount of dawdling idiots in the outside, its not a cruising lane ffs.

Anyway, the snow really shows up the poor drivers, theres no real need go uber slow, just keep you distance and dont make any sudden braking manoevoures.

Driving along the lanes is another matter, the characters than tend to take off their HGV's on to our fine but narrow lanes, tend to have a screw loose.But again theres still more old dears holding people up on the lanes than hgv's.

Would you say the foreign HGV's tend to be more of a pain than the UK ones (aimed at R124 specifically)
 
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R124/LA420 said:
Anybody who tells me truckers are bad drivers need just borrow my keys & rig and blind reverse it round a bend for me, then, just then I may listen to them. ;)

Exactly. My dad drives a transporter on the continent. Ive been with him, and seen it all. I think most new drivers should have to spend a few days in a truck, just to see what $%^% they have to put up with.

And for those that think truckers drive up each others chuffs on the motorway for fun, or take 10 mins to overtake, for fun, have no idea what their on about.

Actually R124, you may know the firm my dad works for, they are based at Radway Green.
 
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James_N said:
Exactly. My dad drives a transporter on the continent. Ive been with him, and seen it all. I think most new drivers should have to spend a few days in a truck, just to see what $%^% they have to put up with.

And for those that think truckers drive up each others chuffs on the motorway for fun, or take 10 mins to overtake, for fun, have no idea what their on about.

Actually R124, you may know the firm my dad works for, they are based at Radway Green.

Thanks mate. :)

I'd like to see the average Joe drive an artic,in a straight line or not, then I'd laugh as he wondered where to start with a 14speed gearbox!

I could go on, not much point. Until you drive a truck, you simply have no clue about what it is to drive them, shame 90% of car users are oblivious to this.

I'm not perfect, but, I do know I spend my driving day making allowances for idiotic car & van drivers, if I did not do this, the trail of destruction in my wake would be a sorry sight. Generally other drivers take us (truckers) as agressive road hogs, without considering for a minute what it is to drive something 53ft long & weighing upto 44ton's.

As for Radway Green, I know it well. well, if its the one near Jct 16 of the M6 - ;)
 
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wohoo said:
I gotta say, i prob do 30-40k miles a year, generally HGV's or White van drivers dont really bother me, my annoyances are the Pic-up drivers and 7.5 tonners, they are idiots, they use the outside lane and just sit there clogging up the entire motorway.

But i will say, the vast majority of car drivers havent got a clue, lane discipline, poor speed judgement, poor overtaking skills, more often than not its normally a car driver going uber slow in the inside lane forcing a lorry driver out to the middle lane.

The amount of time I have seen vans/slower vehicles trapped in the fast lane because some numpty has decided to increase his speed whilst being overtaken is unbelievable. The van driver can then no longer overtake but has to drive alongside the car in the middle lane whilst his lack of speed causes a tail back behind him. All because the middle lane hogger has no idea what is going on around him.

I've driven all kinds of vehicles which have been capable of all kinds of acceleration and speeds. When in a slower commercial vehicle I get frustrated by incompetent car drivers. Whilst driving cars capable of more speed I find myself still cursing other car drivers and sympathising with delayed commercial vehicles.
 
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wormwood said:
The amount of time I have seen vans/slower vehicles trapped in the fast lane because some numpty has decided to increase his speed whilst being overtaken is unbelievable. The van driver can then no longer overtake but has to drive alongside the car in the middle lane whilst his lack of speed causes a tail back behind him. All because the middle lane hogger has no idea what is going on around him.

I've driven all kinds of vehicles which have been capable of all kinds of acceleration and speeds. When in a slower commercial vehicle I get frustrated by incompetent car drivers. Whilst driving cars capable of more speed I find myself still cursing other car drivers and sympathising with delayed commercial vehicles.

I have been in a queue in the outside lane, where the guilty party has been a 7.5 tonner or a pick up driver, just dawdling along, then they get annoyed when you end up undertaking them when they refuse to move out of the way.

But tbh thats the case wih car drivers too, the amount of times i have 'undertook' people in any of the inside lanes doing the speed limit is getting insane.
 
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If the so called "car" drivers were made to sit in a tanker or other HGV for a day and drive down various routes I gaurantee you would see some complete idiot in a car who thinks that they and they only can do what they want when they want. and my reason for going so close to a vehicle in front of me in the motoroway is not just tailigating and saving fuel but to stop some B***Y idiot trying to pull in front of me without any warning. If had a pound for every time I stopped at a traffic light and left just a little to much room some a**e h would pull in just so they could get to the lights first. As for trucks hogging the lanes and forceing people to move over or give way.. Think in the majority of cases the truck driver has seen you coming from a long way back he knows how much space he needs and what speed he needs to travel at to manouver safley now I know when its me I take the space by the time the driver of the car gets there he suddenly thinks he should have had right of way and starts complaining or thinking that he has been wronged...
When I drove cars I thought I was a good driver ... boy did I learn the hardway and now come to see car drivers as permenant hazard no matter how good they proport to be.

On a final note I will concede that like everything else there are bad drivers no matter what they drive on the roads but you aint seen nothing yet. just wait till the Bulgarian and Romanians hit the road.
 
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Daff_Duck said:
and my reason for going so close to a vehicle in front of me in the motoroway is not just tailigating and saving fuel but to stop some B***Y idiot trying to pull in front of me without any warning..

and stopping distances dont apply to HGV's I take it?? remember when you slam into the arse of the truck in front because you didnt want anyone to move infront of you you'll also take out the 2nd and possibly 3rd lane....

And what happens at motorway junctions? all the HGV's go bumper to bumper so car drivers who want to exit have no choice but to pull in front of the HGV's....

Daff_Duck said:
Think in the majority of cases the truck driver has seen you coming from a long way back he knows how much space he needs and what speed he needs to travel at to manouver safley .

if truck drivers see us so far away then why do they insist in pulling into our lane and then indicating?
 
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