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Common sense
 Post subject: Ban JCBs from roads
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 11:09 
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The grieving dad of a Teesside man who died in a terrible smash is calling for slow-moving vehicles to be barred from major roads.

Jamie Richardson from Ingleby Barwick died on November 18 last year after colliding with a JCB on the A66 slip road off the northbound A19.

It is believed that the 29-year-old, of Penderyn Crescent, did not notice the JCB in time to brake sufficiently as he made his manoeuvre off the dual carriageway. He was declared dead at the scene.

PC John Morton of Cleveland Police's road policing unit, told the hearing that "on the balance of probability" the JCB's lights were clearly visible that evening and not obstructed by a tipper arm at the rear.

"It is possible that the driver of the van failed to realise the presence of the JCB, due to a momentary lapse of concentration," he added.

However, Jamie's father, Mick Richardson - an experienced lorry driver - said he believes that JCBs create a serious hazard for other road users.

He said: "If I was travelling along the A19 at 20mph, I would be stopped by police and prosecuted for causing an obstruction. Why do we allow JCBs to travel at that speed?"

By coincidence, both drivers were employees of Northumbrian Water and were travelling to work that evening. Jamie was driving at between 60 and 65mph.

In a statement read out to yesterday's inquest, the JCB driver, Paul Isbell from Guisborough, said he noticed Jamie's white Citroen van in his rear-view mirrors.

"I knew it was coming too fast and would run into me," he said. "The force of the impact lifted the rear of the JCB off the road."

Teesside Coroner, Michael Sheffield recorded a verdict of accidental death.

Speaking afterwards, Mick Richardson, of Piercebridge Close in Stockton, told the Gazette he may take the matter further.

"I'm too upset at the moment to think about it," he said. "But something should be done. A JCB creates a wall of death and these rotating lights are a waste of time."

Shortly after Jamie's death, the family paid tribute. They described him as "a fantastic fiance to Fiona, a loving son to Mick and Kay and a caring big brother to Ben, as well as being a fun-loving, happy-go-lucky friend to everyone who met him."


Absolutely correct and something should be done. They are nothing more than a slow moving wall of steel on a fast motorway. Its only allowed because companies are too cheap to to use proper transport for them.

Again it seems anything is allowed to be done in this country if its on the cheap.
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spankthecrumpet
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 11:20 
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Without being insensitive, JCBs are perfectly entitled to use these roads, and if you're unable to see a JCB on a slip road then you probably aren't going to see Miss Micra attempting to join at 35 either. If we take the JCBs and other slow moving "big" things off the road, then my guess is that people are going to spend even less time looking out for cyclists.
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Common sense
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 11:24 
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The slip road is on a steep downward slope on a tight left bend in all fairness and it happened on a Novermber evening. Again your asking people to be 100% error free.

How can you nip people for going 5mph over the limit on a clear stretch of road, yet allow slow moving walls of steel on a motorway?
I mean you also get the other problems of the sheer backlog of traffic they cause when they are on a motorway at rush hour.
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Rigpig
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 11:38 
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I'm not sure about banning slow moving vehicles from the roads. These vehicles are part of the machinery of our industry and have to get from A to B like the rest of us. But perhaps better road engineerng would help.
For instance....Took my IAM test yesterday, mentioned elsewhere that there were a couple of 'this is a setup/windup' scenarios that developed. One of these happened as we joined the A442 Telford Eastern Primary dual carriageway down a sliproad with a very short run onto the carriageway itself. Crossing the bridge on the roundabout above gives you a clue as to what is on the A442, but as you come down the sliproad you still need to accelerate at a sharpish rate and simultaenously keep your eyes peeled over your right shoulder for fast moving vehicles arriving from behind the banking which is carrying the sliproad and around the gentle bend along which the main carriageway runs. We merged just as a car came steaming around said bend, only to be confronted with a tractor and trailer in our lane which had been hidden behind the bank and bushes ahead of us. Momentary braking followed by a merge behind the car sorted the problem.
Solution...Lengthen the merge region where the sliproad joins the carriageway to extend the time one is given appraising the traffic approaching from behind and cut back the bank and undergrowth to give better visibility along the carriageway.
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Common sense
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 11:47 
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"These vehicles are part of the machinery of our industry and have to get from A to B like the rest of us".

True but they are not normal traffic and surly greater control must be put on them.
The sheer fact that they can freely use motorways at peak rush hour times is just asking for trouble. If they must travel by motorway then maybe they should at least be restricted to non peaktimes.
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JT
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 11:49 
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No, please let's not have another ban!

What I would go along with is some firmer legal requirements on the use of rotating flashing lights for slow moving vehicles, especially on fast trunk roads.

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RichardB
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 11:55 
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Common sense wrote:
How can you nip people for going 5mph over the limit on a clear stretch of road, yet allow slow moving walls of steel on a motorway?
I mean you also get the other problems of the sheer backlog of traffic they cause when they are on a motorway at rush hour.


But the crash didn't happen on a motorway. It happened on an all-purpose dual-carriageway.

All road users are allowed on an all-purpose dual carriageway - pedestrians, cyclists, horse riders, invalid carriages, mopeds, learner drivers, tractors, JCBs, etc.

A motorway is a "special road", and all of the above classes of vehicles that I've mentioned are prohibited from using them (except HGV learners).

It's a sad fact that the Government believe that the word "motorway" is to be avoided at all costs if it's building a new road. The planned A14 upgrade (despite being in the top 10 busiest of all of the UKs major roads) won't be built as a motorway, but as an all-purpose dual-carriageway. It won't even be built with a hard-shoulder.

We have a few A-roads which have largely grade-separated junctions (i.e. motorway style junctions) - yet are still A-roads and not motorways. Most do not have any restrictions on use. There has recently been a couple of accidents on the A34 when vehicles crashed with a tractor. One of the incidents involved a coach and a tractor being used to transport something from Winchester to Oxford (i.e. virtually the entire length of the grade-separated A34) every day.

I personally think that new roads designed to form major trunk roads which are planned as dual-carriageways should be built as motorways, or given special-road orders (like the A55 at Conwy of the A1 and A720 near Edinburgh - which although aren't motorways, they still have restrictions on who can use it similar to that of motorways.)
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ed_m
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 11:58 
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Common sense wrote:
The sheer fact that they can freely use motorways at peak rush hour times is just asking for trouble. If they must travel by motorway then maybe they should at least be restricted to non peaktimes.


sorry.. i fail to see any reference to motorways in the above report.

on balance i'd rather have slow moving vehicles on dual carraigeways which are in general wider and with better visibility.. and a spare lane for overtaking... than takng the windy x-country route frustrating drivers and causing reckless overtaking.
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SafeSpeed
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 12:06 
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JCBs (and all agricultural vehicles) are nowhere near the top sources of danger on our roads. In fact they are barely a source of danger at all in circumstances where drivers are attentive to the road ahead. When there's a collision between an agricultural vehicle and a following vehicle it's almost always because the following driver was inattentive.

Long before we banned agricultural vehicles we should have a jolly good bash at reducing inattentive driving. It'd be a bloody good start if we ran TV adverts warning people that inattention was the number one cause of crashes.

Only after that should we try and change the environment to be more acomodating to error. If we change the environment too soon we end up encouraging and enabling inattentive driving with negative consequences.

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Common sense
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 12:10 
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Sorry I see it as a lesser evil.

To be exact then, a dual carriage way is what I travel on up and down to work with a mere two lanes everyday (although it should be a motorway since its a major route from north to south).

Almost every morning (at peak traffic time) without fail there is a slow moving JCB causing massive tailbacks.

In this madness impatient drivers undertake at daft speeds, reach the JCB and cause massive obstructions when they instantly want to return to the outside lane. Also Ive seen many near crash incidents of people breaking too late, which can cause massive pile-ups and disrupt hundreds of drivers.

Compare that to a country road with far fewer drivers the impact is less.

If they must use dual carriage ways at least restrict the time periods to avoid peak times. Its a mere courtesy isnt it to avoid disruption for hundreds.


Last edited by Common sense on Fri Aug 19, 2005 12:26, edited 1 time in total.

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Sam Dentten
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 12:19 
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Very sad story. One of my closest shaves came as a 18/19 yr old driver, rounding a corner at about 60mph to be presented with a queue of traffic following a lumbering JCB going at about 20mph. I was very lucky not to have been involved in a serious accident. In fairness however, this taught me that if my braking distance is longer than the distance I can see, I am likely to hit whatever is around the corner...

As I understand it, the weight of opinion here is generally behind accomodating all road users by setting appropriate speeds based on conditions, vision etc etc.

However, all big speed differentials have the potential to cause problems. There is a local campaign to reduce speed limits on the A251 on which I commute every day. The usual well meaning but ill informed public opinion is driving this, but it is a dangerous bit of road. A frequent problem is the narrowness of the road, with approaching HGVs routinely putting more than a wheel into the other lane or suddenly slowing to a near standstill to squeeze past another approaching HGV. In addition I've seen some pretty hairy overtaking attempts when patience starved people in underpowered cars try to lunge past in the wrong place. In addition, the threat posed by tailgating drivers is more acute here and needs some careful driving when it occurs, (nearly every bloody day).

I'm certainly not in favour of making drivers of large vehicles lives' more difficult through longer and more expensive journeys, but where road engineering cannot be improved, perhaps we need to consider a few more weight/width restrictions where the risk vs benefit dictates? -Instead of imposing meaningless blanket speed limits & ignoring every other contributory risk.
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Gatsobait
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 12:42 
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Common sense wrote:
In this madness impatient drivers undertake at daft speeds, reach the JCB and cause massive obstructions when they instantly want to return to the outside lane. Also Ive seen many near crash incidents of people breaking too late, which can cause massive pile-ups and disrupt hundreds of drivers.

I sympathise with anyone who has to deal with that almost daily, but let's recognise where the real problem lies. It's the drivers who cannot or will not deal with the presence of the JCB effectively. Unfortunately you don't need to many of them to screw things up for the other drivers who are trying to be sensible about it. But getting rid of JCBs won't solve the problem as the idiots responsible for it will do the same thing when encountering any other sort of slow moving vehicle, and that basically means anything that is going slower than they want to go. For the fairly small number of JCBs about (and sorry, but I think you're the unlucky exception) it's just not going to make any significant difference. OTOH if there were some trafplod about to deal with the idiots who really create the problem... :idea: if it's got that bad why not mention it to the local plod and ask if they can do a bit of rush hour lurjing until people calm down a bit?

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Homer
 Post subject: Re: Ban JCBs from roads
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 12:46 
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Quote:
Jamie Richardson from Ingleby Barwick died on November 18 last year after colliding with a JCB on the A66 slip road off the northbound A19.

It is believed that the 29-year-old, of Penderyn Crescent, did not notice the JCB in time to brake sufficiently as he made his manoeuvre off the dual carriageway. He was declared dead at the scene.

Sounds like a candidate for the Darwin awards to me.

Quote:
"It is possible that the driver of the van failed to realise the presence of the JCB, due to a momentary lapse of concentration," he added.

Momentary? This is obviously more than a momentary loss of concentration. He didn't just not stop he obviously hit a quite a speed.

Quote:
However, Jamie's father, Mick Richardson - an experienced lorry driver - said he believes that JCBs create a serious hazard for other road users.


Obviously he isn't thinking straight but if this is what he really believes then it is he who meeds removing from the road before he drives his truck round a corner too fast to stop in the distance he can see to be clear.

Common sense wrote:
Absolutely correct and something should be done. They are nothing more than a slow moving wall of steel on a fast motorway. Its only allowed because companies are too cheap to to use proper transport for them.

Again it seems anything is allowed to be done in this country if its on the cheap.


I did think you were being sarcastic.
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Common sense
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 13:15 
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"if there were some trafplod about to deal with the idiots who really create the problem..."

Nope, there was a brief two week period where I saw one about about two months ago, thats its.
By the way my police force is chronically in debt and recently made massive job reductions so without even trying I might as well save the time in not asking compared to me writing a wasted letter for me asking for extra traffic police.

Sarcastic about what Homer?
This is not an exaggeration, we deal with them on this road daily where were also sometimes plagued with farmer jack in his combined harvester on top of this. Sometimes your lucky enough to miss them but you can well imagine to frustration caused by an almost daily use of this route.
As said there is really no better way, its prcatically the only major route without having to travel an extra distance to use the next major northern route.
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Sam Dentten
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 13:29 
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Common sense wrote:
Sarcastic about what Homer?
This is not an exaggeration, we deal with them on this road daily where were also sometimes plagued with farmer jack in his combined harvester on top of this. Sometimes your lucky enough to miss them but you can well imagine to frustration caused by an almost daily use of this route.
As said there is really no better way, its prcatically the only major route without having to travel an extra distance to use the next major northern route.


I'm not a JCB owner/driver but was your solution for this a case of putting the JCB on a big flatbed? In many rural locations, JCBs are part and parcel of farm landscape maintainance as well as building. Many sites would not be accessible enough to a big flat bed (hence I suppose the reason for the JCB's existence?)
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johnsher
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 13:58 
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Common sense wrote:
The slip road is on a steep downward slope on a tight left bend in all fairness and it happened on a Novermber evening. Again your asking people to be 100% error free.

"common sense" says you should ALWAYS be able to stop in the distance you can SEE to be clear. Therefore if the road surface was crap, the weather was crap and it was dark so visibility was crap then he should NOT have been going 60mph. People like the deceased are exactly the sort of idiots that the scameras are missing.
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Earl Purple
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 14:15 
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but [sarcastic] 60mph is below the speed limit so it MUST be safe [/sarcastic]
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Common sense
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 14:19 
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But are you not using the very same excuse pratnerships want?

Speed cameras require you to be 99.99% perfect as is your argument that he should have been 99.99% perfect. He wasnt, now he's dead.

He could have been inattentive for a short period of time.

Can you vouch your never inattentive?


Sam Im sure somewhere along their journey they could find a safe location to put it onto a flatbed for at least some of its journey.
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SCE
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 14:30 
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He didn't see a big, yellow JCB in front of him - thats a big "momentary lapse of concentration".

Sorry for his family, but the JCB didn't jump out in front of him, of swerve across the road into his path, it was in front of him. If he didn't have time to see a slow moving vehicle travelling in the same direction as him then he was driving too fast for his available view of the road ahead.
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malcolmw
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 14:37 
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The number of slow moving tractors on main roads has increased due to the change in farming practices. At one time the farmer worked the land round his farm buildings with just a short trip across the lane to his other fields keeping his road exposure to the minimum. Now that farmers contract out work, we see contractor's JCBs and other vehicles making quite long trips on the road to the next farm in the next village etc.

Of course, whether they are using red diesel or road legal fuel is another story.

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