Hi there, just a few pointers and advice please on a few things that may well pop up on my travels.
Due to the nature of our company, we deliver to places in the middle of nowhere, and a lot of the roads you take are just wide enough for the truck, and no before anyone says, you can’t take alternative routes. So my first question is - what to do if you face an oncoming car, as I’m sure as hell not going to reverse my truck half a mile back to the nearest junction/passing point. As well as this I also fear a car speeding around the corner and hitting me head on.
My other scenario, and this actually happened to me yesterday, is what to do on those bloody awkward Y junctions where you can not see one side of the road your turning in to. Yesterday I just had to pull out. Luckily there was nothing coming. Now you get told, try and get in line with the markings of the junctions to try and give you a view both ways, yea easy if your a car, not so if your a 30ft long rigid. So is it just a case of pull out and hope?
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make sure you have a front mounted camera at the very least, preferably with GPS so it will show your speed and no arguing about the place of impact, then if you stop and the bod coming the other way smashes into you, the blame will be clear.
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on single track roads travel at a speed you can stop within your vision, you can’t drive for the other bod but make sure you’re driving properly with due care for the type of road.
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sharpen up your reversing, and keep those windows and mirrors clean, because there will be times when you will be the one reversing, you meet another lorry, possibly artic, tractor and huge trailer, combine harvester, a bus, or even a car or worse an mpv/4x4 driven by someone who seriously cannot reverse, you may find its either your reverse up or you all sit there indefinately.
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don’t rely on sat nav (no lorry driver should ever rely on this toy, it is an aid not an instructor), if you have a smart phone and google maps find the address and have a good poke nose at the map, sometimes a much better route will present itself to the human who has common sense, a computer does not have any sense.
Also invest, if you haven’t already in a good large scale road atlas.
Oblique (angled) junctions are best served by setting your wide angle mirror as wide as possible and you should be able to see, DO NOT pull out blind.
If your mirrors are not up to the task, then request a further mirror be fitted somewhere for this purpose, could even be inside the cab, set at an angle to give the view you need.
Obviously all stickers/curtains/other ■■■■■■■■ has been removed from all windows so you have maximum visibility.
Don’t forget sound on such roads, radio off, windows down at that oblique junction, its surprising how often you can hear things coming before you see them.
If you are really in the wilds make correct use of your horn during the daylight hours, if you are coming up to a blind single track bend and no householders to annoy give the horn a blast, if dark full beam headlight flashes so you light up the outside of the corner…hopefully people who use such roads have the wit to know about such things and you may well see an answering flash on that outer edge.
Lastly, take your time, single track roads are not where one should be rushing about.
When turning right at one of those nasty junctions, if I can’t move the nearside mirror (electric) enough to see or see in the wide angle mirror I’ll take my seat belt off and haul myself up so I can stand up behind the wheel and crane my head round to see. Then pull out slowly until I can see in the mirrors.
I’m fortunate to have a sleeper cab with nearside window so the curtain is always wound up tight by the pillar so I’ve got extra visibilty.
When travelling country lanes, try and scan way ahead as often with a higher driving position you can spot the roof of a car over a hedge long before they’ll spot you. If you encounter a wider a bit of road before meeting the vehicle you can be waiting for it so it can pass.
Best advice of all is to drive at a speed where you can stop if you have to, if someone comes around the bend at 40mph and you are trundling along at 15mph. You’ll be stopped when they hit you.
Absolutely brilliant advice from the previous two posters, a few other things to add is read all the clues the roads/lanes/tracks give you, a lot of these remote places tend to have a surprisingly large amount of goods vehicle traffic at the very least one truck a week, these tend to leave rather large clues like wear on the road surface, rubber marks on the tarmac, scuffs or wheel troughs in the grass verges and even a lack of low branches, if nothing else they can reassure you that your not going to be the next “Lorry stuck in a field following his satnav” Facebook post.
Also keep an eye out for “passing places” to let either oncoming or following traffic past you, these are another clue of a narrowing section and also keeps the locals happy if you let the followers past, they then actually help clear a path for you.
Building sites, post codes can be vague…look for the yellow signs on approach with names like ‘‘the poplars’’ ‘‘the oaks’’ etc
make sure you dont meet anyone similar to this poke faced ■■■■■,and if you do,just get into the passenger seat and let her see you putting the kettle on.
remember to switch of your dashcam before emptying your pish bottle over her though.
youtube.com/watch?v=lnYgVl3gojg