Has anybody come across similar incidents?
Within a 6 week period I have had two friends both driving on the M20 in Kent at different times both being - for want of a better description - sideswiped by a left-hand drive foreign lorry.
It seems that the lorries, both with trailers, were pulling out from the inside lane to the centre lane when they hit the cars. The fact that the lorries were left-hand drive coupled with their height presumably caused a blind spot which meant that they couldn't see any approaching car that was in the process of overtaking them.
In one case the lorry didn't stop, the assumption being that he did not even know that he has hit anyone. The car was spun around and thrown onto the hard shoulder without the driver really realising what had happened. He was very shocked, car badly damaged.
The second incident hospitalized the driver. Again car badly damaged. This time the lorry stopped. It had an English driver. The attending police officer said at the scene that this was the THIRD such incident in two days that he had attended.
Last week my husband was held up on the M25( East Grinstead area) because of an accident. When traffic resumed flowing he passed a foreign lorry with trailer together with damaged car. It is reasonable to suppose that this was a similar kind of incident.
From hereon in I shall be giving all foreign plated vehicles a very wide berth indeed.
Not all accidents on motorways, it seems, are caused by excessive speeds.
Rita
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Rita
Like you I now proceed cautiously when overtaking obviously left hand drive HGVs. A colleague had her company Escort written off on the M1 about four years ago when an HGV squeezed her into the crash barrier on the central reservation. In this instance it was perhaps the lorry 'wandering' into a lane it should not be in at all rather than moving to overtake in the central lane. As I live close to the M40 services which are often the first stop for lorries after the Channel crossing (and a favourite jumping off point for illegal immigrants until recently) I tend to assume tiredness on the part of foreign drivers coming north.
David
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Rita, I saw a programme on TV about it some time ago, probably 2 yrs ago now. It is a common cause of accidents and the advice then was just as you say, keep a wide berth of foreign trucks.
Mike
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Have dealt with a few of these. If you actually sit in the drivers seat and look through the mirrors you realise how much of a blind spot there is.
If when you are overtaking and you look at the lorry mirror if you cannot see the driver then in all probability the driver cannot see you!
Andrew.
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"If when you are overtaking and you look at the lorry mirror if you cannot see the driver then in all probability the driver cannot see you!"
I recognise this line from running it in the newspaper column a few years ago. I think it was shortened to "If you can't see my mirror, I can't see you". A truck driver sent it in to try to get car drivers to stop trying to overtake his long artic on roundabouts. But it applies everywhere.
Middle of the roaders who don't think are actually a bigger problem than foreign truck drivers. The first rule for all drivers is to drive defefsively, which means engaging your brain to think what might occur in front of you and behind you. If a truck is closing on another truck then OBVIOUSLY it's going to pull out to overtake.
HJ
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Honest John wrote:
>
> "If when you are overtaking and you look at the lorry mirror
> if you cannot see the driver then in all probability the
> driver cannot see you!"
>
> I recognise this line from running it in the newspaper column
> a few years ago. I think it was shortened to "If you can't
> see my mirror, I can't see you". A truck driver sent it in to
> try to get car drivers to stop trying to overtake his long
> artic on roundabouts. But it applies everywhere.
>
> Middle of the roaders who don't think are actually a bigger
> problem than foreign truck drivers. The first rule for all
> drivers is to drive defefsively, which means engaging your
> brain to think what might occur in front of you and behind
> you. If a truck is closing on another truck then OBVIOUSLY
> it's going to pull out to overtake.
My piece of advice when travelling in heavy traffic on a two
lane dual carriageway is not to enter the "danger zone"
i.e. the lane between truck and central reservation until your
exit is clear, then move swiftly past the truck.
Taking 3 minutes overtaking a truck while doing 57mph is asking
for trouble.
/john
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HJ - What about "middle of the road drivers" who DO think but aren't alllowed in the outside lane because they're pulling a trailer ?
Last July I was side-swiped by a German lorry on the M25 at Chertsey. I was fully loaded with wife, three kids and camping trailer. He wasn't overtaking, merely "wandering", presumably map reading/mobile phoning/daydreaming etc..
After a prolonged horn press from me he wandered back, not before there had been an awful screech and the trailer had nearly flipped over, bringing screams from all on board. I managed to pull in front of him and we both pulled on to the hard shoulder. As a German speaker myself, I leapt out and jumped up to his cab door and swore several times in German at him. He was obviously amazed anyone could speak his lingo and became hugely apologetic. I was thankful we were all unhurt but his front end had shredded my trailer nearside mudguard.
That was where we left it, after more invective from me and much shoulder-shrugging from him and on arrival at friends near Munich the next day had to spend hours searching before finally forking out £40 for a new mudguard.
Rather ironic that on this stretch of M25 I got a fixed penalty and 3 points for taking my trailer in the outside lane (to avoid something similar) in 1993.
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If the lorry driver can?t see you in his mirrors, just telephone him.
Just teasing HJ!!
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Where I am we drive on the right but had the same problem in reverse. Trucking companies were buying up cheap s/h trucks RHD from Japan and using them here, desoite the fact it's illegal. Only when several buses were pushed over mountain-sides with 100+ fatalities for similar reasons to those you quote each time were they banned. yet in Italy, trucks used to be RHD as far as I can remember? What of that?
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Recall a fatac investigation yonks ago where a little old lady was run down on a pedestrian crossing by an 18 wheeler semi which set off.
Result was that she had started to cross close to the lorry and there is a significant blind spot on the nearside for people below a certain height. The driver genuinely did not know there was anyone there.
Paul Ripley covered this ages ago in his column and his advice was basically the same.
Question to Andrew and his colleagues, in your class one training, or maybe its at other times these days, do you still get to drive HGV's so that you can give evidence that you really do appreciate from first hand the difficulty of the visibilty, noise, performance or lack of and so on.
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Could give a warning toot before entering the danger zone?
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Two years ago, just before Christmas, and just having returned from 1400 troublefree miles driving in Europe, my wife and I were sideswiped by an Italian truck on the A20/M20 about 10 minutes out of Dover. what was particularly frightening was that not only did he hit us in the side, the impact and our higher speed , spun us in front of him, where he clouted us again and sent us off the motorway. Fortunately we were adjacent to a raised embankment which acted to slow us down by the time we had reached the top.
I was never that keen on my Renault Safrane, but from the safety point of view, we both escaped serious injury, although the car was total write off.
It was the most frightening experience, in that it was dark and we had absolutely no forewarning - the first realisation of something wrong is the impact and the side window glass spraying all over the inside of the car. When the Police arrived they were very matter of fact about it and told us that they probably had at least 10 of these type of accidents a week. Oh and the Italian driver did not bother to stop - he was traced by a Good Samaritan who stopped to help us, who found him in a local truck stop, trying to pull out the dent in his tractor unit. When the Police asked him why he had not stopped - he said he did not want to have a confrontation. Incidentally the Police said that action/ proceedings are very rarely taken against foreign drivers, as they fail to answer the summons to attend court!
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yep seen several such incidents and foreign drivers are routinely let off by plod
even when it is their fault and its nothing to do with blind spots
followed one foriegn truck who kept pulling onto roundabouts despite cars already driving round from right with right-of-way
traffic plod and their political masters are as ever total waste of time
see what happens to a UK truck driver in belgium when the situation is reversed... more like justice
please UK traffic police go and shoot yourself you are the biggest waste of public money going
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A major blind area on both UK and foreign lorries is actually just behind the cab.
As the mirrors are about 8 feet off the ground they look straight over anything in that area and if you don't want to be there when the lorry turns.
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