Safe Speed Forums

I've just been having a chat with my vociferous work college who is the fount of all wisdom, so he thinks. But I've got egg on my face today.

It came down to him saying it's an offence to run out of fuel on a motorway. Ridiculous - says I.

One web search later and sure enough we come up with an instance of some people who have indeed been prosecuted for this 'offence'.

The argument started because I was taking about my friend who has recently bought a motorbike, a Yamaha R1. (R1_nut will know what I'm on about here)

This bike doesn't have a fuel gauge. Instead it has a warning light which comes on when you are left with about a further 20 miles left in the tank, depending on your riding of course.

If you're paying attention to the road etc., it's easy to miss the exact time when this 'idiot light' comes on, especially wearing a full face helmet. He ran out of petrol on the motorway some time back, in L3, in the rain That's another story...

He managed to get over to the hard shoulder, thank goodness, but presumably this is all his fault and deserves to be prosecuted?

Is this another dumb law to add to the plethora of other dumb laws?

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

I remember passing through the Mersey Tunnel with my parents in 1970, and seeing signs which said that motorists running out of fuel would be heavily fined. So perhaps it's not an entirely new situation.

Congratulations to your mate for doing something sensible and buying a decent bike

I remember watching Top Gear where Jeremy decided he would drive to Scotland and back on one tank of fuel to see if the Audi(?) was as economical as the literature said. He did mention that it was an offence to drive on the motorway if you knew you would run out of fuel.

I would be really narked if I had enough fuel to get off the motorway but got stuck in a couple of crawling jams resulting in me running out of fuel and then getting walloped with a fine. I would hope that under those circumstances some of IG's *cough* discretion *cough* would be applied.

BTW Jeremy managed to get back surprising even Audi who said it couldn't be done.

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Prepare to be Judged

So has it ever happened to you R1nut? I haven't ridden it yet so I don't fully apreciate the problem. But even on my bike the dials, especially on a sunny day, can be obliterated, as you know.

Motorists! If you see bikers with their indictaor left on, please understand this is a bad problem for us in the summer. Please wait before you pull in front or assume we have got it right.

BTW, saw the Top Gear prog. It wuz good

Just had another thought If you are running low how would you stand if your were pulled over doing 40 mph trying to save every last drop?

It's getting worse...

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

Sounds more like the VW Passat from, Oooh, 10-15 years ago or so, It had a modest engine and a huge fuel tank so could give 750 miles (or therabouts) on a tankfull.

There may have been an audi with a similar set up.

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

I have run out of petrol on the motorway. At the time I had a reserve tap which I'd turned on the previous night and forgot about in the morning. Luckily I was close enough to an exit to get off.

Thanks for pointing out that a biker on a motorway/DC indicating left may be in dire circumstances. I've had a chain fly off while in the outside lane of a motorway and it's amazing how quickly you lose speed and the ability to move into gaps in traffic to get to the hard shoulder



I'm fairly certain that it was an Audi and it was definitely more recent than 10 years ago. Could have been a VW though.

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Prepare to be Judged

iirc it was an A8 and he spent most of the journey at 1500 rpm or below (1500 rpm = about 50mph in top gear iirc).

It was a V8 engined diesel Audi, it arrived back in London on virtually fumes

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Nick

and they had a camera in the tank, showing the ridiculously small amount of fuel left sloshing around!

My Peugeot 406 estate could do 760 miles if you filled it all the way up to the filler cap, even without making a special effort to conserve fuel.

Does ANYONE ever deliberately set out to run out of fuel on the motorway?

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

Very few, I should have thought, but is that the point? Negligence is illegal in other circumstances as well. If your tyres are bald, you get points. If you leave wires exposed, it's against the law, even if no-one gets an electric shock. If you sell a dangerous product because you have been negligent, you can get done for it, even if no-one gets hurt by it.

There must be lots of cases where the coppers do you for negligence, so why should running out of gas be different? It certainly could be quite dangerous, and it’s avoidable. Let ‘em have it, I say.

Wot's a fuel gauge?? Seriously - there is actually no way to tell how much is in the tank without actually opening it on alot of bikes - of the 4 in our house, NON of them have a fuel gauge.

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

On my old FZ750 you simply press the handy reserve switch, then wonder why it still does not run, check the tank and find it is completely empty. Later checks show the switch is faulty and the bike just runs on the reserve feed by default.

At least I found this out near the top of a hill with a garage near the bottom

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

So you've just passed the last junction prior to a lengthy stretch of m-way before the next junction/service area, with your fuel gauge/trip computer/mental note of remaining fuel/etc telling you you've got enough fuel to reach the next petrol station with a healthy reserve given your present average rate of consumption, and allowing for reasonable levels of congestion further along the route. You then turn the next bend/crest the top of the next hill/bridge to be faced with all lanes clogged with barely moving traffic for as far as the eye can see, despite there having been no warning of this on the previous matrix signs or on the traffic radio reports. Your average mpg figure, and corresponding remaining range, starts dropping...

Whilst I'm not condoning anyone who drives past a filling station knowing they've got insufficient fuel to reach the next one unless the road ahead is totally clear, I think it's unreasonable to expect everyone to always have sufficient fuel so as to be able to reach the next filling station regardless of what conditions may lie ahead. And what if you DO have enough fuel to reach the next station only to find its closed/out of whatever fuel you need? Where do you draw the line between being guilty of incompetence and being guilty of getting caught out by an unusual set of events that no-one would reasonably expect to occur?

Avoidable most of the time, yes. Avoidable as an absolute, no.

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Chris

How about this way - you’re incompetent if you do run out of gas, and you’re not if you don’t. That seems like a conclusive test, doesn't it?

Being the competent chap that you are I assume you fill up at every service station on a motorway to ensure you never run out?

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Prepare to be Judged

Have we established there is definitely something in law which makes it prosecutable and if so, what's the charge? Where's it written in the Highway Code or where ever?

All I have seen so far is a web search where some have been done and Jeremy, (I hate motorbikes) Clarkson who said the same.

As an aside - At work we have three pool cars and I was moaned at once for not filling the car up. The last person to use it fills up but only when it drops below half.

Now this bugged me and I dug my heels in because in my own car I only ever fill it up half way and refill when the low light came on: The reason is because I did a calculation and worked out that if I've got a 12 gallon tank, if I try and always keep it topped up I'm almost carrying the equivalent of an extra passenger, (albeit a light person)

This will affect economy, wear the brakes out quicker and place more demands on the clutch suspension etc. etc.

I then added that if you have a quarter of a tank left, on the Diesel Astra, you can still get to most destinations up to about 150 miles!

So why refuel at half or always try and keep a full tank? It makes no sense.


(Smug mode on): I've got a nice fuel gauge on mine Sixy

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

It seems like a simplistic attempt to define a neat black/white answer to a question with more shades of grey than the wardrobe of a goth who doesn't use fade-preventing washing powder...

If circumstances are SO extreme that, having just filled your tank to the brim at a service station immediately prior to the on slip, you then end up being caught between that and the next junction/service area in the mother, father, brother, sister, first cousin, second cousin and next door neighbour of all traffic jams, and despite carrying as much fuel as your vehicle was physically capable of carrying, you STILL then run out of fuel, is that incompetence or just seriously bad luck?

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Chris

There are other ways ... one could drive down the yellow brick road and ask the Wizard of Oz for a brain ... but gas up in Munchkinland first!

Hmm, you re-register under a different username (proving a deceptive nature) because you felt 'persecuted', but then you pipe up at every opportunity trying to rile people up. One might suggest that you're the author of your own demise.

I'd say he's aready earned his troll alert badge.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.