Carryfast:
How is crashing a 40 tonner into something at 85 kmh any less catastrophic than 100 kmh?.
Scenario; a 40 tonner on a motorway approaching standing traffic. For whatever reason (not paying attention, asleep at the wheel, heart attack, etc) the driver does not see the stationary traffic ahead and ploughs into the back of the first vehicle. Simple physics, coupled with historical data (I don’t have it here at home but have plenty to access at work!) leave no doubt as to the outcome using your example.
Put simply, at 85kmh the 40 tonner (for this example we’ll assume it’s a queue of cars) will ‘go through’ the first couple of cars and momentum will push the cars into each other for say, the first 5 vehicles. At 100 kmh it would involve say, the first 7 vehicles, that is 2 more vehicles and their occupants are now embroiled in this incident. Even if the 15 kmh momentum caused only one more vehicle to be involved [than at 85 kmh] that could be the car in the queue that has the family, kids and all, inside. Potential for increasing the number of injuries/fatalities by 5, all because of 15 kmh difference.
Carryfast:
Why is driving a truck on the limiter ‘stubborn’ ?.
Because there is a time and a place. Sat alongside another ‘stubborn’ driver who refuses to give-up a couple of kmh is not professional driving; it’s bad enough getting into that position but it is in no-ones interests to compound the problem by prolonging the situation.
Carryfast:
If both drivers are driving on the limiter there would’nt (should’nt) be any need for one to overtake the other it’s variations in limiter calibration which is mostly the cause of the problem not ‘stubborn’ drivers.
Just because you think that limiters are wrong, it doesn’t take away the fact that as professional drivers, who have by the very fact that they hold a HGV entitlement have had more training that your average car driver, shouldn’t use the road and their (speed limited) vehicle to take out their frustrations on other road users. If you have a problem with speed limiters and their calibration, get onto the DfT or even your local MP and go through the correct channels! Hanging it out, side by side with another limited vehicle whilst holding up other road users will do nothing to get the issue of speed limiters looked into, but, guaranteed, it will get all of us even more overtaking bans introduced.
Carryfast:
Who says that there’s going to be an ‘empty’ lane behind whichever truck backs off and it’s just as likely that the inside lane has following traffic as the overtaking lanes and a ripple in lane 1 is just as likely as any other lane.
So what’s the alternative? Stay alongside each other while the queues behind get even longer and the chances of an accident/incident in those queues increasing?
Carryfast:
The modern day lane changing issues are more than likely the result of dumbing down the speeds of traffic to the point where many drivers of all types have’nt got a clue.
Again, blaming the speed limiters for poor driving skills isn’t an answer. Dumbing down the speeds isn’t the reason that ‘drivers of all type haven’t got a clue’, I’d even suggest that they have got a clue but make the selfish, rather than sensible choice when such a situation presents itself.
Thankfully the stubborn/ignorant/foolish/selfish/unprofessional drivers are still in the minority - it’s just that they seem to shout the loudest, without reason or hardened facts to back-up what they say, and consequently have a negative effect on the rest of us.
Good to see the sensible option being recognised.
enit?:
Better to ease off and let him past.