Safe Speed Forums

There is a land fill site near here (on the farm at work). They dig out sand and ballast and fill it with rubbish. There are loads of trucks going in and out all day. It has it's own private road through the farm. I get to know which firms have got good drivers and which don't.

On the way back to work from my morning break on Wednesday I was on my bike. I went over the mini round about and noticed a small skip lorry approaching the roundabout after I exited. I kept looking in my mirrors expecting him to turn right down the pit road. He didn't.

Now I really start looking in my mirror, because firstly he was gaining on me fast and secondly I have to turn right. I often get people trying to over take me as I turn right into the yard on both my bike and tractor. We can block their overtake on our tractors, but I can't do this on my bike.

Anyway, as I approached the turning I'm getting worried, I'm indicating right and am riding on the white lines but in my mirrors this skip lorry is getting very large very quickly and I can hear the empty skip rattling. Fortunatly there were no vehicles either approaching on the opposite side of the road or lurking in the farm entrance, so I just shot across the road to safety. As I did, skip for brains had to go wide to the left of where I was and left a cloud of dust which kicked up when he clipped the grass verge.

I'm not really sure what I could have done to make it more obvious I was turning right or what I could have done had I not been able to get out of his way, though embeddding myself in his grill seemed the obvious choice.

I'd have stopped on the left, waited for him to pass, then turned right. Hell, I've even done that in a car!

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Paul Smith
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Skip Lorry Drivers

People complain about white van drivers but I find skip lorry drivers are really the worst! They tailgate, drive too fast and are generally aggressive.

(I'm sure there's some lovely skip lorry drivers about I won't stereotype you all )

See you are from Essex too Adam, maybe it's Essex ones!!

In the defence of skip-lorry drivers (if I can...) its a shit of a job - you get abuse from the public constantly and are expected to do more tips in a day than its actually possible to do. Its not an excuse for bad driving though.

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.