Long distance and going in to a trance

UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS THE UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUM (INTERACTIVE)
41

Pat Hasler:
I can remember doing night trunk for Swifts in the 80’s and going from Woodall to Watford Gap without any memory of the journey :open_mouth: :open_mouth:

I want to know what you are on! as i want to give some to the Mrs :stuck_out_tongue:

42

Tried shouting at cows, but I always run out of things to say after the first ‘moooo’

43

A colleague (in the bus company) of mine once asked if I had every popped the handbrake on going around a roundabout. I suggested it could only be done realistically in a single decker bus as the double deckers were liable to roll.

Seems late one night returning to depot empty and quite tired he had gone around a roundabout and got mixed up with the gears and the handbrake and popped it on. Woke him up quite fast. Not sure how he thought it was the gearstick as the buses were autos.

I did it years ago in a 7t Iveco, where my hand missed the gearstick and I started to pull the handbrake back thinking I was going into another gear. My brain changed gear and I stopped doing it but it woke me up for a while.

When I used to drive unrestricted 7t trucks I’d do ‘truck hopping’ on the motorway to keep me sane. Didn’t do it as much on dual cabbageways as I usually stuck to speed limits and the artics either did 56 or 60 on them and I was personally limited to, ahem, the speed limit :astonished:

44

steptoe:
Putting the handbrake on at 56mph is probably not the best idea :open_mouth: I learnt not to do it a few years ago, it was 1989 I think, anyway it was when F reg was new. I had a new Scania 113 first day out (no familiarisation training then) driving over the M62 with a DFDS tilt on from Immingham. As I was going down the hill from Saddleworth she crept up to 65ish so I decided to apply a little bit of trailer brake and pulled the wrong lever. I was so lucky it stayed in a straigt line and I managed to take it off again, those old tilts had crap brakes so you had to give it plenty on the lever and as I pulled it it went far enough to lock on, and for a second your brain cant quite decide whats happening or what to do about it. I can assure anybody that hasnt tried it they try and stop very very quickly (and that was all on drum brakes) My wife who was my girlfriend at the time ended up in the footwell after impacting the dash. It was a Topline model so it had seatbelts fitted but in those days nobody used them. I was very lucky that day, traffic was lighter then and it stayed straight, nothing broke or sheared off, thats an amazing amount of load suddenly put on the running gear and brake components. I dont think my boss would have been too happy either first day out in a new truck. I soon learnt that when I used the trailer brake in a Scania to put my thumb on the handbrake and pull the trailer brake with my fingers, then you cant get it wrong even in the dark. :laughing: Its not something I have done twice :laughing:

Did a very similar thing many years ago in a 143 in Turkey, I had the truck for 2 Years (so no real excuses) and blamed fatigue for the error,
The lucky part of it was it only bit for a split second and I released it in time, could have been real serious as I had 2 large crates in the tilt with machinery inside them.
I considered myself to be very lucky that day if the load had shifted I would have been down a ravine !!
I made what I considered to be the ultimate Scania modification and tie wrapped a sock round the trailer brake arm, So in the dark I could feel I had the correct lever, I carried out further modifications and upgrades to it finally ending up with soft crushed velvet MMMmmm !!

Kenny

45

bringbakbiffa:
I think the urge to pull the handbrake up is probably psychology like standing on a cliff or a bridge part of the brain urges u to jump while the majority og ity holds u back there is probably an official name for this phenomina but it is quite common I think!!

Handbrake Vertigo is the Medical term.

46

I tend to text with my left hand, drink can of Stella with my right and steer with my knees whilst also watching a dvd on my dash mounted laptop… Been ok so far. Maybe id be dangerous driving properly with 2 hands on steering wheel? :laughing:

47

4whatitsworth:
Hell :open_mouth: You learn something new every day.
I thought all those skid marks you see on motorways going onto the hard shoulder were caused by broken air lines :confused:

HAHAHAHAHA PMSL!!!

48

Not touching the steering wheel was what I used to do 1.35Km was my record, gets the adrenaline going though. :confused:

49

wirralpete:
always find putting down the window and hurling abuse at cows in fields helps and god help if im overtaken by a transporter full of sheep

I’m sorry I thought I was the only one lol I get worried when they answer though lol

50

“Sometimes i say something to see if i can still speak” - ala ■■■■ Rivers.
Done that a few times in the past :blush:

51

Trukkertone:

wirralpete:
always find putting down the window and hurling abuse at cows in fields helps and god help if im overtaken by a transporter full of sheep

you wanna try pipping your horn and barking at sheep… brilliant…

:laughing: :laughing: reminds me of my multi drop days last year, u can bet your arse as well that when you come back the other way they will turn and run as soon as they see you again!!!

Never tried the hand brake thing but have thought about it!!
On my night trunks when really bored I see how long I can drive while looking in the blind spot mirror on the windscreen and see how straight I can keep it next to the solid hard shoulder line :sunglasses:
I also set the seat to really high and really springy and see how many times I can bounce up and down on it in a minute. :grimacing:

52

Just been reading through this thread and can’t tell you the relief I feel!
The amount of times my hand hovers over the brake scares me! What the hell’s going on■■?

Also, I never miss the oportunity to salute a Magpie so if you pass/are passed my an artic with the driver saluting almost constantly you’ll know who it is! :blush: :laughing:

53

Harrr, I do my very own In Cab Olympics routine to wake me up:

Drop the seat base right down and do pull ups/press ups off the door handle and whatever I can find in the middle.
Drop the seat back right down flat and do sit-ups, adjust the steering wheel so you can lock your knees under it.
Then set the seat high, reach down to the seat frame and do pull downs. Adjust the seat spring if you’re a fat nacker/ not strong.
Do behind the heed pull ups off the top bunk.

If that don’t work, random braying of the horns at whatever I think needs beeping at.

Then picking targets to see what I can hit by hoying me colleagues crap cd’s out the window. HATO’s are my favourite target. Nothing fills me with more joy than to see ‘HeartBeat - The Best of the 60’s’ bouncing off their battenberg bonnets. If I hit one of them, I put a pound in the charity box in Morrisons.

If all else fails, I ring the Highways agency to tell them I seen a lump of metal/horse/mine in the middle of the road, somewhere between Jct 32 and 96.

Up until a couple of years ago Recovery industry was tacho exempt. We regulary ran 24 hour plus days. If you’re used to it your body adjusts and you can do it just fine. Doing it just occasionally totally knacks you. It wouldn’t be uncommon to do London, back to base, Edinburgh, back to base, Liverpool, back-load Manchester, back to base in the same shift. Biggest wake up call for me was, drove to Exmouth in the wrecker, got tipped, turned round and drove home. On way back, I woke up driving down the embankment back onto the M5.

The other, I had a big bumble bee splatted on the windscreen for about 3 days, wipers wouldn’t wipe it off and it amused me a bit, so I left it on. Was on the way up the A9 with a reefer on the hook, in a proper trance. Not another vehicle on the road but all of a sudden that squished bee was a stationary car right in front of me! I hammered the brakes, swerving at the same time and luckily avoided the imminent collision with the imaginary car. That woke me up a bit. Had to retighten the chains on the underlift a bit too :slight_smile:

54

SmashedCrabFace:

Sam Millar:
Don’t you think of the children during this process? :open_mouth:

Nope. I have to concentrate fully on remembering where the corners are. If my concentration was to lapse and I started thinking about children, I’m bound to forget about a corner and that would make it a very dangerous game indeed.

Epic reply. We really need a “like” button.

55

I’m another one who has often been tempted to pull the parking brake. :confused: Quite relieved to read plenty of others seem to have the same tendancy, although it is a bit worrying.

Essentially, ‘that’ lever to our left is the suicide switch when we are at speed. Not many other instances in life where completely screwing ourselves over would be quick, easy and accessible, amazing how our minds seem so attracted by it.

56

You know that you’re really bored when you think about trying to open the door and jumping out at 65 mph. :open_mouth:

57

Does anyone try sticking their head out of the window at speed to wake themselves up?

Hurts a bit if its raining though!

58

matt3903:
Does anyone try sticking their head out of the window at speed to wake themselves up?

Hurts a bit if its raining though!

Me and my mates used to play a game called ‘Frozen Head’’ back in the day.
The rules were simple. Stick your head out the window for as long as you could while the other drove at speed. My friend holds the record. Ten minutes at 100mph+ and an outside temperature of -7c. What a legend. I don’t know how he isn’t dead.

59

You guys are nuts!

Never thought about the handbrake.

I used to load flowers at heathrow. I once got up to stansted and couldn’t remember driving from Heathrow. Didn’t know where I was either!.

Sent from my GT-S5830 using Tapatalk

60

Christ, I never even thought about this, but yes, I have had a very strong urge to pull the handbrake on to see what would happen! I KNOW what would happen so that’s probably why I’ve never actually done it at speed. does doing it at 15 m.p.h. count coz I’ve done that? Banged my ■■■■■■ head on the steering wheel and saw stars for a few minutes. When me and my mate Brian ran together on nights, he would usually be in front, and on the A11 at Thetford on that dark narrow bit, the bugger would switch off his lights.Talk about ■■■■ it! worse was when he did it on a roundabout and you were up his arse and turning at the same time. That is scary…You hit the anchors and end up Glasgow kissing the windscreen!!! He was a ■■■■■■■ for doing that.