Speeding

[dieseldave]

Saratoga:
One TM told me “The tacho doesn’t know where you are, you can go to the limiter” yeah right.

This one is very high in TM’s urban myth chart.

So you’re driving along a dual carriageway. They have roundabouts and traffic lights, so your speed varies, and sometimes the vehicle comes to a stop. The TM is right, a tacho doesn’t know where you are, but it does record the manner and speed of your driving

Does this guy seriously think that VOSA can’t tell the difference between a vehicle driven on a motorway and a vehicle driven on a dual carriageway if they were to analyse some tachos??
I have a tip for him The patterns of acceleration and deceleration are different on different types of road.

I know of a firm whose depot is down a country lane quite some distance from the nearest dual carriageway. The local VOSA guy dropped in one day and had a look at some tachos. It was obvious from the speed traces that the vehicles were regularly speeding up and down the country lane to and from the depot. When the TM was required to visit the Traffic Commissioner, who told him that he had to keep one truck off the road for a fortnight. The driver also lost out, because it was a smallish firm who didn’t have any alternative employment for him.

The moral of the story?? A person who speeds puts their licence / job in jeopardy. An easy choice to make eh??
Terminology: TM sometimes stands for Total Muppet.

I’m with you Saratoga, keep it legal and sod the rest of 'em

[dieseldave]

flying_fenman:
But I think they should then go back to the people who complain and say, “Well actually our vehicle was travelling at the speed limit of 40 mph along that road and we have tachograph and telemetric evidence to support this.” I feel this would show them up in an even better light.

Maybe I’m old and cynical, but do you think that the guy who made the complaint would think “well they would say that wouldn’t they?” IMHO, somebody who took the trouble to make the complaint is probably so full of their own self-importance that they wouldn’t tolerate such a glaring gap in their knowledge pointed out to them, no matter how politely it’s done.
You see, it is dangerously slow, because he said so.
Me, cynical? Guilty as charged

[saratoga]

Until the general public have it forced upon them that lorries are limited to 40mph on single carriageway roads they won’t grasp it. And even then when they’re stuck behind a truck at 50mph that’s driving 10mph over the limit they’ll still say they’re slow…

Can’t win, either way

[kenny1975]

Dual carriageways speed limit 50mph, I wouldnt encourage anyone to break the speed limit, or look down on someone who sticks to the limit its their right.

But i def wouldnt call someone “racing” or dangerous who is doing 56mph on most dual carriageways. Espec when in a lot of cases 56mph is more like 54 or 55mph.

Remember getting a run in my mates grandfathers truck years ago, he had been driving since the year dot. Be hard pushed to say he was a dangerous driver since never crashed or killed anyone. Yet regular night trunk to Liverpool from Glasgow was 3hrs 30mins drive for him since was just paid for the shift rather than per hour.

This was obviously before speed limiters.

[rog]

Kenny1975:
Dual carriageways speed limit 50mph, I wouldnt encourage anyone to break the speed limit, or look down on someone who sticks to the limit its their right.
But i def wouldnt call someone “racing” or dangerous who is doing 56mph on most dual carriageways. Espec when in a lot of cases 56mph is more like 54 or 55mph. .

There are a lot of A roads with inapropriate limits for trucks as well, where doing 50 is illegal but in no way unsafe - I am sure we could name a lot of such roads but one that springs to mind is the A303 single carriageway which is almost wide enough in places to be a dual and has little or no side roads etc

[kiowan]

Whether you drive upto the speed limit is at the drivers discretion, ie some 40 zones aren’t really appropriate for you to be doing 40 in the truck, ie some have quite tight sections where pedestrian islands are in the middle of the road and the windblast from the truck at 40mph passing a foot away would be quite dodgy. So you use your discretion to go slower. However funny that it doesn’t work the other way, get a long wide straight bit of single carriageway with no junctions or anything and you go over 40 and you’re not allowed to use your discretion.

Was just getting peoples views on the subject, as like I said, the majority of trucks seemed to do 56 in the 50 and even 40s so wondered what the majority here thought out of interest. Not planning on putting my licence on the line to keep up with the flow.

[dieseldave]

Kiowan:
Not planning on putting my licence on the line to keep up with the flow.

I’m with you for two reasons Kiowan.
1.) The licence is both expensive and difficult to obtain in the first place.
2.) Currently, you save up 12 points from smallish 4 speeding offences, before you lose your licence- so that’s 4 speeding fines to pay as well.

IMHO, I wouldn’t fancy rolling the dice when the potential outcome is so unpleasant