Posted By ian Can sombody please tell me why do some lgv drivers drive with the lights on in their cab at night. Are they so ugly they'r frightend of being in the dark with themselves??? Also why do some of them wait till you get up the side of them and then decide to speed up.??? Also it seems to be getting more regular that you dont even get a thank you for flashing drivers in or out these days. What's happening to the job?? it never used to be like this. At one time drivers sort of played the game to (keep a rule) if you like. but now i think it is just every man/woman for themselves ans sod you mate suck this!!! And finally i am realy glad to see more and more lady drivers on the road. why they wanna do a job like this i'l never know but well done anyway. Why stand at the kitchen sink pealin potatoes and washing up when you can get abuse on the roads these days for free.

Posted By Ian Blenkharn The law on seat belt use in HGVs is woefully inadequate, with many vehicles on the road that are legitimately free of these essentail safety devices. I guess that is why the Police seem to ignore compliance with seatbelt use even more than they do for cars. But what about the drivers? Where seatbelts are fitted their use is rare indeed. Big boy drivers who are so tough they don't think that they need protection? Just wanting to be tough, and don't like being seeeen wearing a belt? [they could belt up but leave the lights off - it might just save their life, and knowbody would know] Perhaps they immune from crushing their upper abdomen and chest against the wheel, or from flying headlong through the windscreen? That would be quite a trick! Seatbelts save lives. There is so much evidence for that, it is surely incontravertable. Perhaps the Police cannot manage compliance, but the employer should be able to. What about all those RAs produced for HGV use? Who includes in the RAs the mandate that seatbelts MUST be worn, or that seatbelts MUST be retrofitted into older vehicles? Perhaps it is time to look again at those RAs

Posted By Sean Nuttall Why do wagon drivers speed up when alongside them ? Perhaps this is more about you not concentrating on your driving as opposed to blaming the truck driver ? Since the introduction of speed restricters initially at 60 and nowadays at 55, lorry driving has become a lot more difficult. Imagine everyone's car being governed to 70mph. Now perhaps you will understand why you get those God awful ques behind lorries where they have tried to overtake each other on hills but the restrictors kick in to stop them getting in front. Whose idea their introduction was wants shooting. Fortunately horse power has increased dramatically in the last 20 years but it still takes a long time to get a lorry up to its 55 motorway limit. Once there it is the ideal to keep it there to reduce fuel consumption, component wear and maintain progress so that your evening meal will make it on time to the supermarket. A fully laden truck of any horsepower (up to 600 I believe these days though I started pulling 32 tonnes with 180 in the bad old days) will not accelerate as fast as your car even if its a Yugo. So if you did manage to find yourself being out gunned by a truck then what the heck were you doing overtaking it in the first place ? One might suggest a poor assessment for overtaking ? Perhaps driving when too tired ? Perhaps time to chop in the Yugo for something a little faster ? As for the lights in cabs issue, it is vanity. Lorry drivers cabs are their homes and many take great pride in how they are decked out inside. For some reason, some have always driven with lights on (used to be red lights in my day). If you are concentrating on looking at them in their cabs then you are not concentrating enough on the road. I won't comment on the seat belt issue as I have been out of the game for too long but I wouldn't have liked to wear one when I did drive due to the nature of the way the seats in lorries move. Perhaps they have changed things now but they would have been seriously uncomfortable. Would like to see that accident stats for truck drivers. Certainly in the 9 years I drove I was involved in two accidents with suicidal car drivers. On both occassions the cars got mashed and I was unhurt. Sometimes its handy having 38 tonnes mass. Of the serious accidents I witnessed with trucks, I think it is fair to say that no seat belt would have saved the driver.

Posted By Jonathan Breeze All, Consider this as a warning shot. This is not the forum for promulgating gender stereotypes. If you have a problem with my removal of the above message, then contact us on webteam@iosh.co.uk Regards Jonathan Breeze Moderator

Posted By Paul Devlin I'd like to turn the question round if you please. I drive 7.5 tonnes vans on occasion when helping out my colleagues in the depot if they are short staffed. It also keeps my hand in if I ever have to go back on the road. Invariably when Im travelling along the motorway or dual carriageway and passing a motorist why do they feel the need to then speed up and sit alongside me which means when I get to a hill or gradient I cant then pull in and this leads to a build up of cars behind me? Oh and why do I have to cross from the inside to the outside lane to pass someone doing 50 in the middle lane of the motorway? It work both ways, I bet a few "professional" drivers have noticed this? I have to say I've noticed the lights on in some trucks etc but how else can you read the paper/map etc without straining your eyes??

Posted By Paul Devlin Hmmm I was being funny when I said about reading maps etc although we all know that people do take those sorts of risks however I didnt mean to offend and was not having a pop at HGV drivers but all drivers in general I wish I had seen sean's reply now must have been bad to be removed. Its not just that they increase there speed by a couple of miles an hour, you'll know that they can be crawling and when they see a truck pass they bloody speed up to keep you out and I mean normal cars that can go a sight faster than lorries.

Posted By Sean Nuttall Oh dear wind your neck in Fingaz, as you didn't post the original thread then why you getting so up tight. Eish, filling your post with block capitals at me. Shall assume that you hadn't had enough sleep after your night trunk and were grumpy, no offence taken. As for the post that was removed, well it was a little tongue in cheek and hardly offensive. The girls in the office thought it amusing and they are professionals but guess the moderator has to appease those ladies who could be offended by some light hearted gender humour. I sit suitably chastised with warning shots fired clearly across my bows

Posted By Sean Nuttall Manny, glad you saw the funny side before it was pulled. A bit of South African/Rhodesian humour never did any harm really. Now where is my brown tweed jacket, I have real work to do

Posted By ian (fingaz) Eddie Stobart drivers. Do you really think they would do anything wrong? tut tut truly professionals

Posted By John T I agree with a lot of what has been wrote regarding driving with the cab lights on, reading maps etc, but this is a minority of drivers. But as a truck driver myself for over twenty years one of the biggest problems I now see on a daily basis is people who use their mobile phones (not to talk but to compose text messages) they hide their phones below window level to avoid been seen by the police and constntly look down to check their spellings. Absolutley crazy. This applies to all drivers not just Large Goods Vehicles. The other problem is the lack of juristiction the police/vosa have against foreign drivers, nothing against them but they should have to stick to our law, which they dont because there is no means in which to prosecute. How many times have you been driving through roadworks with a 40 mph speed limit for example and a foreign truck driver thunders past at 55 or more? This is because they know they can get away with it. Rant over, I am off to bed now after my night trunk.

Posted By Ian Jones With regards to the seat-belt comments, i find truck seat-belts comfortable even with the bouncy seats (Truckers will know what i mean) More importantly i find them comforting, a few years ago i witnessed a fatal truck collision on the motorway and i believe that if he had been wearing a seat belt the outcome would have been different. This is only my opinion not fact. I think the drivers who drive with red lights on look like mobile brothels, Truckers 4U Regards Ian

Posted By Lilian McCartney Something else I've noticed about drivers is that good manners seem to be getting lost somewhere. At a roundabout I use quite often there are very long lorries which find it difficult to keep to the one lane, so I hold back and let them round. This infuriates some other drivers - not them all. What I can't understand it is why very few other drivers let them do this? One person I worked beside moaned about a lorry coming over the lane and when I asked why they didn't let him round they said cos it's not in the highway code