Safe Speed Forums

I would have pulled to have words. Tailgating is tailgating so what you are tailgating


It may be that the person wishes to turn left and is waiting.. but not realising how close.. per a report from one of our chaps when we made "cycling safety" "campaign of the month" last.


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If possible .. make eye contact... friendly eye contact. If not.. hand signal (NOT the fingered ones) .. but one to say "either back off or overtake me please!" I have found sticking out my right arm and then just waving my hand as if to say -- "can you give me a bit more room here?" seems to work out OK most of the time. Especially if I then give a :thumbup: as a gesture of thanks..

Failing that .. I ease up and wave them past me.. and smile at them when they do. (Usually more in relief that they are where I can see them more in a way

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Vans are heavier than cars to handle. It's why some end up "elephant racing" If that is the case then all vehicles over 7.5 tonnes would have to be removed from th roads across the globe.

They are slow, big .. - but still fairly graceful movers on the roads all the same. . We have been trained to escort at low speed as well as at high speeds. It does take a heck of a lot of skill to control cars and motorbikes in convoy when escorting a heavy load. But we are also aware of the skills demanded of those drivers in charge of those huger vehicles They are perhaps much better than folk give them credit for .. but then that;s because the vehicle is slow.. holds them up and simply does not have the OOOMPHHHH! to manage the quick overtake and guarantee getting back to safety gaps (or even having sufficient gap for them to move into once past the hazard. I have a great deal of respect for the average HGV/large van driver/bus/coach driver. Training and acquiring those licences is not that easy and I would say they are perhaps better skilled than most out there.

It's why they may well stick behind for a long time .. as per the HGV driver which a CW reader praised with great appreciation a fortnight or so ago Big trucks are very well engineered.. very powerful.. but they do not have the accelerating power that cars will have and they also have to take account of the gap ahead to move into without compromising a safety margin or showering the cyclist with grit laden spray

Caravans? I am afraid I am a kindred spirt to Jezza Clarkson on that one

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FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

Heavy trucks in North America seem able to keep up with light traffic on the Freeways - uphill as well as down. But I doubt if a British operator could afford the fuel for that size of engine

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

But what's the speed limit. If I recall . some of those are just 50 mph. Dependent on which State.

But fuel is a crippling cost and our HGVs are limited to set speeds of 40 mph (single NSL) to no more than 50 mph (Dual ) and 60 mph on motorway in any case. A lorry on a rural NSL trunk would have to consider exceeding 40 mph to complete the overtake in some cases as well - assuming they were not using a limiter to this speed.

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

pah, 204BHP vito for me Too many years spend driving company crapheaps like 40hp 1.7 Ton GVW diesel v*uxhall c*mbo's. Following a sub 20 tracter on a winding NSL and being unable to safely pass is pretty dangerous.



They belt along the florida freeways at 70 no problems. I say belt, there was nothing alarming about the speed itself, just bizarre they didn't all crash and turn into a fireball at 57mph.

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Fear is a weapon of mass distraction

Ah.. not been to Florida yet Ben. . Keep intending to visit. Hear it's really very pleasant.


I've had hols in New York, New England, Colorado, Texas, and California to date though.
Found speed limits varied. Most limited to 50 mph on my first visit and now some of these are 70mph.. but still no carnage resulted. as a result

Off topic deviation warning.. But this is a chatty forum as well as a serious one.

Cycling, as a I recall - pretty good. Texas was very into horses though. I am thinking of going to Kentucky for a short holiday - but this has more to do with one of our younger childen being lucky enough to have a school exchange trip with a school there. I will have some American kid staying with us over Easter hols. as a result of all this.


Apart from being Kentucky horsey-racy -racing stock country - anyone know much about its cycling opportunities? Ta ever so if you can. (I know they have a tasty choc chip cooky as well. but otherwise .. know little of the place )



My real preference - still good old fashioned Europe - especially Burgundy area .. hic! (Need a red wine drinky guy! )

_________________
Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

I was driving trucks in the US in the 1990's. They had no limiters on them like ours have to, well our boss limited ours to 70mph . They're engine are nor really any bigger or more powerful than the Euro ones, but in some states they are a little lighter. I did follow a 379 extended hood Pete@ though Nevada at a steady 85mph once. Our trucks would do the same if they took the damn limiters off them.

Worked in the US for 2.5 years, been in 26 States, coast to coast, boarder to boader, including nearly 5 months working in Florida, which is the one state I wouldn't go back to. It is a festering swamp.

Oh I didn't realise that the limiters were gradient sensitive. Why is that? I can't see the point of limiting any vehicle to 10mph on a 15% gradient.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

But have you considered what P/W you would need for a 44 tonner to maintain, say, 35 up a 1:7 hill??

Quite appart from the fact that having a truck fitted with a suitable engine to achieve this would cruxify the fuel consumption, It would also, in all probability, not be legally posssible due to EUSSR emissions legislation.

Of course, we all know the solution to that one!

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

I have already conceeded that point about fuel consumption.. But is it not possible to design a high power engine that is economical when being used at low power?

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Ill have to think about that one

but it is not an easy problem to solve.

Most trucks (I believe, somebody will corrct me if I am wrong no doubt ) are around 500BHP, the most powerfull (in a brief search) I have found is a late model volvo with 700BHP.

to maintain 35-40 up a 1:7 hill would require something nearer 1500-2000BHP. Building an engine (and indeed drive train!) that could produce and handle this level of power for those rare but "special" moments without making the truck a LOT more expensive, thirsty, heavy, unrelable, etc would be a bit of a tall order. (climbing steep hils is not something that heavy trucks do very often, so they are not optimised for doing so. It is just a PITA for the rest of us (and the truck driver for that matter) when they do)

my first thought was that something like nitrous injection might do it but given the high degree of optimisation already applied to HGV engines I doubt if you could provide that much extra Oomph without it blowing up,

Certainly not an extra 1000BHP!

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

Can't remember the last time I got stuck behind a truck doing 10mph. I have spoken to truck drivers at work that have said they can get from one end of the M62 to the other in top gear. Isn't there a maximum gradient when building roads? I can't imagine anyone being aloud to build a road that trucks would struggle to negotiate.

Thats part of my point. Motorways (and to a lesser extent A roads, since some are very old) do have limits on gradient and curve. HGV's drivetrains are (more or less) optimised to operate all day at 56MPH on near level roads. And a pretty good job they do too, as far as fuel economy is concerned. However, part of the consequence of this is that the engines are designed to operate well only realy at a specific speed/rpm (thats one of the reasons why they have all those gears) As soon as they go outside this range of speed/gradients they will become significantly less economical

HGV's dont find themselves grinding up 1:7 hills verry often and generally I would imagine that operators will try to avoid routes that require this like the plague (Not least because I would not be surprised if fuel consumption exceeds 1 gallon/mile under these circumstances! A couple of miles like that and you have lost the profit for the day!)


"Globally" It is something that doesnt atually happen that often so is not worth spending a lot of money to solve, HOWEVER, those of us who regularly use roads with steep hills on them in our day to day lives will tend to find ourselves being routinely stuck behind slow trucks and will, as a consequence, get a distroted perspective of how big a problem it actually is!

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

Funny you should mention that. On a tractor forum that I frequent, there is often questions asked about chipping tractors. There is a guy on there that sells chips for tractors that swears blind that by increasing the fuel and thus power of a particular tractor (not using genuine chips) the tractor will use LESS fuel! I won't answer why he thinks that his fuel maps are better than the ones that the engine manufacturers have spent £££££££ developing, nor will he tell us where the upper limit is at what which point the increase in fuel actually increase the fuel used. If his increases in fuel decrease the amount used, there must be point where it actually uses no fuel at all or you have to start pumping it out of the tank! He reckons they use less fuel because they are working less hard. I think he's talking rectally.

Exactly. As I do most of my driving on the older roads in the Pennine foothills, including the Cat and Fiddle, my impression is that every lorry is powered by elastic bands. But the presence of "crawler" lanes on motorways suggests that the problem is more widespread than you admit.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Big trucks = heavy.


It means they need more time .. more space.. more consideration.


I overtake with due care.

I do not ever argue if on bicycle. I look . look at road position. signals given. plan accordingly

It's not the "self preservation society" but common sense at work here.


If someone passes me.. overtakes me.. So WHAT. They did. So long as no one place me in danger here.. I actually do not care that much.


If someone hovers behind me.. I worry as I prefer to see them ahead of me if cycling. I do worry if I am holding them up. I try to give a signal that I am aware of them and could they just bear with me a second or so longer?


I find courtesy usually begets courtesy to be honest. I admit Cumbrian rurals is not LONDON or general towny rudeness but I still find being polite usually works for me all the same

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Fear is a weapon of mass distraction

I used to move out more to the right and sometimes put my arm out to indicate "do not overtake".

When it was safe to do so I would move over towards the left then wave the vehicles on with my right hand to overtake me. This usually was only a few seconds later.

Often I had the best view of what was oncoming so I could see when overtaking was safe and when it was not.