Armagedon:
Carryfast…In WW2 the average age of the combat veteran was 25…in Vietnam the average age of the combat veteran was 19…nnnnnnnineteen.
in 1982 in the Falklands 19 nnnnnnnnnninteen 
Armagedon:
Carryfast…In WW2 the average age of the combat veteran was 25…in Vietnam the average age of the combat veteran was 19…nnnnnnnineteen.
Classic!
Carryfast:
Janos:
I know I would prefer a 30 year old soldier in a tricky situation than a 19 year old every time.By that logic the Hitler Youth would have been driving their tanks and half tracks up the Mall long before 1945.
Carryfast, you are on the wrong bus.
LIBERTY_GUY:
Eight legged tippers take some stopping when laden, as folks on site will often try to overload you. Easy to catch out the unwary, irrespective of age.The more you drive, the more experience you get - well that’s the theory…
A max weight tipper has as much braking capacity,possibly more engine braking capacity,and therefore takes no more stopping than a max weight 4 wheeler.
The experience issue is a red herring because everyone has to start somewhere to get experience while the issue of load capacity and knowing how to slow and stop a heavy truck is all essential basic training from day 1 stuff.Any failure in a driver’s knowledge of either being a failure of that training not age or experience.
Janos:
Carryfast:
Janos:
I know I would prefer a 30 year old soldier in a tricky situation than a 19 year old every time.By that logic the Hitler Youth would have been driving their tanks and half tracks up the Mall long before 1945.
Carryfast, you are on the wrong bus.
Carryfast:
A max weight tipper has as much braking capacity,possibly more engine braking capacity,and therefore takes no more stopping than a max weight 4 wheeler.The experience issue is a red herring because everyone has to start somewhere to get experience while the issue of load capacity and knowing how to slow and stop a heavy truck is all essential basic training from day 1 stuff.Any failure in a driver’s knowledge of either being a failure of that training not age or experience.
I would have to disagree, as most of us trained to get our HGV licenses with empty trucks. Nobody trained me how to rope and sheet, use straps or much else really. Most was self taught by watching others. Sure the same applies to many drivers out there… Quite a frightening thought really…
Carryfast shut the ■■■■ up, you talk ■■■■■ and garbage and know nothing.
LIBERTY_GUY:
Carryfast:
A max weight tipper has as much braking capacity,possibly more engine braking capacity,and therefore takes no more stopping than a max weight 4 wheeler.The experience issue is a red herring because everyone has to start somewhere to get experience while the issue of load capacity and knowing how to slow and stop a heavy truck is all essential basic training from day 1 stuff.Any failure in a driver’s knowledge of either being a failure of that training not age or experience.
I would have to disagree, as most of us trained to get our HGV licenses with empty trucks. Nobody trained me how to rope and sheet, use straps or much else really. Most was self taught by watching others. Sure the same applies to many drivers out there… Quite a frightening thought really…
As I said a failure in the driver training regime.I was actually instructed/tested on the typical empty wagon scenario I was also in large part instructed on the brakes to slow block change gears to go doctrine. 
However I was ‘also’ taught’ ‘outside’ of that obviously flawed regime the dangers of over reliance on brakes and the difference between driving an empty light truck as opposed to max weight by those who knew better.By ‘taught’ in that sense I mean just being told and just seeing and hearing by example was enough.As for getting the experience in all different types of loads and load security again that is always realistically going to be a case of having to learn that outside of the driver instruction scenario.
The relevant bit in this case being that there ( should be ) no difference between that driver instruction regime and the historic essential fact,that truck brakes aren’t and never were,designed to be used in isolation,without ‘also’ being used in ‘combination’ with the maximum possible engine braking at all times.That ‘difference’ and contradiction at the driver instruction stage being the potential issue in this case. 
I currently drive an 8 wheel tipper and the main issue i think is that the lgv test is either done with little or no load. This needs to change because no matter what advise you are given by your trainer on braking and stopping a truck until you experience it for yourself you have no idea. I regularly run fully loaded to the max, 32 ton and the drive is always very different then to what it is empty. It’s not just stopping its speed, driving around bends, up hill down hill and the list goes on. Also an 8 legger in my opinion is one of the hardest trucks to drive due to twin steer etc, possibly harden than an artic at times. However. I don’t see newbies being tested in 8 leggers. I think the training needs to be fully loaded and not empty.
Coolrider:
I currently drive an 8 wheel tipper and the main issue i think is that the lgv test is either done with little or no load. This needs to change because no matter what advise you are given by your trainer on braking and stopping a truck until you experience it for yourself you have no idea. I think the training needs to be fully loaded and not empty.
I’d guess that would help massively in an ideal world.I’d also guess that ironically it would also show up the flaws in the idea of brakes to slow gears to go more effectively.Unfortunately in that case as I’ve said in most cases driver instruction would then be shown to be more of a case of the blind leading the blind.Than under the present regime which provides such idiotic instruction doctrine with the get out of an unrealistically light wagon.
Having said that it should be a part of any driver’s basic skill set to be able to argue with the instruction and flawed doctrine being imposed and just get on with practicing the idea of gears to slow brakes to stop so that it becomes instinctive wether loaded or empty,in defiance of the instructor’s protests,just as I did.
Carryfast you are talking rubbish and were not there when the tipper crashed, so shut the ■■■■ up, you are an idiot.
He tried to slow it down by rubbing the wall? F me if I got no brakes going down that hill, and I’ve been down it, Im hard lefting it to ram that vehicle head on into the side wall. According to Sky news he hit that 4 year old then 100 metres crashed into the car killing others . If that’s correct, 100 metres you kidding me ? 19 years old and it shows anyone with her a brain could have stopped that truck sooner. He Panicked and ■■■■ it up
speno:
He tried to slow it down by rubbing the wall? F me if I got no brakes going down that hill, and I’ve been down it, Im hard lefting it to ram that vehicle head on into the side wall. According to Sky news he hit that 4 year old then 100 metres crashed into the car killing others . If that’s correct, 100 metres you kidding me ? 19 years old and it shows anyone with her a brain could have stopped that truck sooner. He Panicked and ■■■■ it up
At that length at that rate of acceleration and speed trust me you won’t have the space or the time to get it to turn through the 90 degrees required to ‘ram it head on into the wall’.You’ll be lucky to get an angle of less than half that.The most likely outcome in that case would be a massive trail of damage caused by the combination of speed and inertia and shallow angle followed by a right hand side roll over.He really doesn’t need those trying to apply a runaway car solution to a large truck runaway situation wether he’s 19 or 59.
Quite a few replys have said about “test unladen”. This is the criteria for lgv test vehicles as from 2013.
Training vehicles first registered before 1.1.2007 will not be required to carry a load on test until January 2017.
From September, 30th the load weight requirement for each category is as follows:
Category C1 (medium goods vehicle) – no change to existing requirements so no load will need to be carried.
Category C1E (7.5 tonne goods vehicle with trailer) – although the vehicle itself (C1) will not need not to carry a load, the trailer will. A load weighing 600 kilograms must be present on the trailer.
Category C (HGV) class 2, rigid – over 3.5 tonnes, but no more than 32 tonnes. From September 30th a load of 5 tonnes must be secured on the vehicle.
Category CE (HGV) class 1, artic or drawbar – the new criteria requires a load of 8 tonnes to be carried and the weight will need to be distributed in the single trailer. Draw bar type vehicles will need to have a 5 tonne load in the unit and a 3 tonne load in the trailer.
Maybe the driver training establishment could explain the reason for the proposed pointless,unrealistic,over delayed weight regime.
If they aren’t going to apply max weight for vehicle type for both instruction and testing there really isn’t any point.Let alone waiting until 2017 to do it.
toby1234abc:
Carryfast you are talking rubbish and were not there when the tipper crashed, so shut the [zb] up, you are an idiot.
We’ve got one saying ‘wack an already runaway 8 wheeler into a low gear to stop it’ and another saying ‘turn it through 90 degrees in less than its own length’ to ‘ram it head on into a wall’ amongst ‘comments’ concerning the age of the driver.While all I’ve said is to point out the potential dangers contained in the doctrine of brakes to slow gears to go and you’ve got the zb nerve to call me an idiot.I’d suggest it’s you and them who need to STFU.
toby1234abc:
Carryfast you are talking rubbish and were not there when the tipper crashed, so shut the [zb] up, you are an idiot.
there’s many threads i’d agree with you, but not this one
Unless you have an extremely slick changing gearbox (and I have no experience of synchromesh truck boxes so I may well be wrong) I doubt you have a hope in hell of getting down a gear or two once it gains momentum, and if you try doing it and miss then you really are in ■■■■ street as any control you may have had suddenly vanishes completely. As soon as you depress the clutch the truck will gain several miles per hour.
I took my test on an empty eight wheeler and had a shock when I had charge of a laden one, everything was different! An even bigger shock came many years later when I took a part laden bitumen tanker for its mot test, I came to a slight downhill junction and braked for a HALT sign only to find that just as I stopped the liquid shot forward and I ended up halfway across the junction! If anything had been coming there would have been disaster, the regular driver was sitting beside me and just laughed but I wish he had warned me about what was likely to happen. Point is that I had been driving trucks for several years yet still got caught out, not having tanker experience, and many of us will have had ‘Brown Trouser’ moments and got away with it but this poor chap, wether through his fault or not, did not.
Pete.
A few years ago i had a heated argument with an advanced driving instructor who told me i didn’t know how to drive when talking about driving down hills fully loaded. I said you go down in the same gear as you would be down to going up he said No you don’t do that nowadays, you drive down in top gear if you like and brake to stop at the bottom, modern lorries he said had brakes which would stop.He actually said all lorries had disc brakes now, I said NO they didn’t. I basically told him he was a fool and he didn’t know what he was talking about and walked away furious.
windrush:
Unless you have an extremely slick changing gearbox (and I have no experience of synchromesh truck boxes so I may well be wrong) I doubt you have a hope in hell of getting down a gear or two once it gains momentum, and if you try doing it and miss then you really are in [zb] street as any control you may have had suddenly vanishes completely. As soon as you depress the clutch the truck will gain several miles per hour.
That is what I was trying to get across to the obvious non truck driver’s idea of ‘wacking it into a low gear’ after it had already ran away.The process of trying to downshift an already running away wagon because it wasn’t put into the right gear at the right time at the start of the descent is always going to be one of the most difficult if not impossible and potentially dangerous things a driver will ever do.The steeper the downgrade and heavier the truck the more difficult it is.In general if the driver has left it late getting down the box at a down grade then it will need to be sorted out very soon after starting the descent and will definitely need to be done while there is still plenty of heat capacity and ability left in the brakes and before the thing has started to gain too much speed in the too high gear.
First it needs to be braked down to a speed lower than that required for the low gear required and it will then accelerate like a AC Cobra as soon as it is declutched.You’ve then got a matter of split seconds to match the engine speed and engage the lower gear before the increasing road speed mis match makes engagement impossible.If you miss the gear you’ve then got a truck in neutral with zero engine braking and brakes at frying point in a matter of no time.The difference in the case of the extra margin for error in matching engine/road speed provided by synchro mesh being no better than marginal in that situation in the real world.
As for being able to do all that without any brakes to start with not the slightest chance and even if the gear was miraculously engaged you’ve still got the situation of an unbraked truck which will still runaway in the low gear but just make a hell of a noise doing it.