Elephant racing

[anonymous-user]

Serious question for truckers - why do lorries try to overtake each other up long hills on dual carriageways? Sure, if you are behind something going much slower it's worth it but why bother when you have the same 56mph terminal velocity?

[SystemParanoia]

here we go

[sheepman]

not many are limited to 56mph anymore, tesco are 52mph for example. my limiters set at 55mph and next service I'm being turned down again to 53mph! i agree that some lorry drivers do take the piss mind, why they can't click the cruise back a little to speed the over take up i'll never know. probably the same type of driver who sits below his limiter then speeds up when you get level

[Philb1]

As has often been said there are a number of variables involved. Limiters can be set for 56mph but it can mean one lorry being 0.5mph faster or slower than another. There is also the weight factor with an unloaded lorry being able to go up a hill faster than a lorry carrying 26tonnes.

Combine that with humans at the wheel and there is the problem. Unless you are heavily loaded its easy to knock back the cruise control to let an overtaking lorry past quicker thus reducing the elephant racing. It's what I do but unfortunately not every driver does this.

[surveyor]

Because some of them are aholes.

Bit like the fker that drove through two sets of red flashing lane closed signs - the ones that have the same legal authority as no-entry and when he discovered that no-one felt like letting him in punted me and and another car onto the hard shoulder. No bloody markings unfortunately.

[Gavin0478]

Ours have been wound back up to 56 because the lower limit of 52 has increased wear on clutches and had a negative effect on fuel economy on the trunking vehicles apparently due to less of a run up at hills and the vehicles being geared to cruise at 56.

I will admit when i get overtaken in my gutless dimwitted fuso POS i will lift off to let the overtaking wagon get past quicker because it does bug me when i get stuck behind wagons racing lol.

[iloveboost]

The lorries should have an overtake button that raises the limiter to exactly 70mph when full throttle is used and the button is pressed. Then when it reaches 70mph it should start a timer that reverts the lorry back to the standard limiter at precisely the average amount of time it takes for a lorry to pass another lorry on the 56mph limiter on the 70mph limiter.
There then just needs to a be a clause in the highway code written that allows a lorry to exceed the standard limiter for up to 'x' seconds and only when used whilst overtaking on motorways with due care and consideration for road users, etc.

[mike-r]

iloveboost said:

The lorries should have an overtake button that raises the limiter to exactly 70mph when full throttle is used and the button is pressed. Then when it reaches 70mph it should start a timer that reverts the lorry back to the standard limiter at precisely the average amount of time it takes for a lorry to pass another lorry on the 56mph limiter on the 70mph limiter.
There then just needs to a be a clause in the highway code written that allows a lorry to exceed the standard limiter for up to 'x' seconds and only when used whilst overtaking on motorways with due care and consideration for road users, etc.

I believe wagons in some countries do have this feature.

[mp3manager]

A small but important observation....when a truck has overtaken me and he's pulled in.....there is then a line of cars in L2 who are still travelling at around 56mph, as the lead car or van doesn't get the boot into it and accelerate away smartly to clear the back-log of traffic.

[jamoor]

I have been to a few other countries where Lorries aren't allowed to overtake during certain times.

[s p a c e m a n]

I now overtake almost as many fking cars as I do other HGVs. Do you know how annoying it is having to sit in the outside lsne holding traffic up just because some tt wants to do 54mph in their car, if they did 2mph more no lorries would have to overtake them.

And now the other thing that needs pointing out is that we are now not just overtaking single lorries, theres always at least one car behind speed matching the lorry so we have to overtake something 150ft long rather than 50ft.

Car drivers, you're in fking cars and 5mph will make no difference to your mpg so stop being dicks.

[djohnson]

Not worth getting upset over. I drive the a1 between Leeds and Newcastle a lot and my general experience is that post elephant race speeding up again means that I end up behind the vehicle I was following pre elephant race ie exactly where I would have been had the lorry not pulled out.

[Jasandjules]

jamoor said:

I have been to a few other countries where Lorries aren't allowed to overtake during certain times.

Quite a lot of French and Spanish and Portuguese motorways have two lanes but no overtaking or if three lanes then no lorries in the third lane.

And OP, I was pondering this question myself the other morning when it added 12 minutes to my journey - especially when we had a stage of the A14 where I didn't get over 60mph for about 12 miles, it was literally trucks overtaking the whole way.

[cptsideways]

I think a national car sticker campaign is required

"Ban Elephant Racing - Its Cruelty To Motorists"

[FiF]

Not this st again.

Next time you have to slow down in your crappy Audi due to one heavy overtaking another take note of the trip reading. When you are able to increase speed again back to your cruising speed take note of that trip reading. Subtract one from the other and then calculate how much your journey has been delayed by the need to drive at 56 instead of x. It will have cost you seconds only. Realise that far more time will have been lost on the journey by your bad driving decisions / planning that you do have control over. Now chill.

And breathe deeply. Relax relax relax.

[Troubleatmill]

FiF said:

Not this st again.

Next time you have to slow down in your crappy Audi due to one heavy overtaking another take note of the trip reading. When you are able to increase speed again back to your cruising speed take note of that trip reading. Subtract one from the other and then calculate how much your journey has been delayed by the need to drive at 56 instead of x. It will have cost you seconds only.

And breathe deeply. Relax relax relax.

Not exactly true....

Newbury to Oxford is pretty much a 70 mph dual carriage way.
Each time I make the journey, there is an entire conga line of trucks overtaking each other.

So instead of 30 miles where one lane is doing low 50ish miles an hour and the other 70mph.
Both lanes are restricted to low 50's for the entire duration.

When you finally get past one truck, quarter of a mile later there is another one.

The slowest 5% of vehicles prevent the other 95% from making decent progress.

If the trucks stayed in lane 1 - they would only be a few minutes late, and everyone else would be on time.

[s p a c e m a n]

Troubleatmill said:

If the trucks stayed in lane 1 - they would only be a few minutes late, and everyone else would be on time.

The problem is that the trucks are limited to how much driving time they can do in a day, 10 hours. So a 5mph difference can make a 50 mile difference, which is the difference between getting home to Essex where you pay an extortionate amount of money for a few brick walls and a roof or having to sleep in a stty tin can in Luton.

To put this into perspective, Leeds is 4 and a half hours from South London on a good day. So to get there and back is 9 hours without traffic, anything 10 minutes further than Leeds can leave you getting home with a couple of minutes to spare.

Edited by s p a c e m a n on Saturday 15th March 09:26

[FiF]

Each must speak according to their own experiences. That stretch of the A34 isn't a frequently used route for me but have driven it several times say 20 round trips in last couple of years.

Only had one trip with hold ups and that was a wide load taking up a lane and a half all the way down to Sutton Scotney. I still got to Hunters of Southampton at the appointed time for the meeting.

My point is that I see these arguments on here all the time and see comments like elephant racing for 10 miles so I was delayed by 10 minutes. Off and on have been taking note of how much my journey has actually been delayed.

In my experience such claims of extreme delays are largely complete horlicks. There may be limited numbers of extreme exceptions granted.

[MajorProblem]

Troubleatmill said:

FiF said:

Not this st again.

Next time you have to slow down in your crappy Audi due to one heavy overtaking another take note of the trip reading. When you are able to increase speed again back to your cruising speed take note of that trip reading. Subtract one from the other and then calculate how much your journey has been delayed by the need to drive at 56 instead of x. It will have cost you seconds only.

And breathe deeply. Relax relax relax.

Not exactly true....

Newbury to Oxford is pretty much a 70 mph dual carriage way.
Each time I make the journey, there is an entire conga line of trucks overtaking each other.

So instead of 30 miles where one lane is doing low 50ish miles an hour and the other 70mph.
Both lanes are restricted to low 50's for the entire duration.

When you finally get past one truck, quarter of a mile later there is another one.

The slowest 5% of vehicles prevent the other 95% from making decent progress.

If the trucks stayed in lane 1 - they would only be a few minutes late, and everyone else would be on time.

When working it out you forgot to say when traveling on long roads like the A1 don't forget to multiply your answer by at least 50.

[bigfatnick]

Gaz. said:

wormus said:

Serious question for truckers - why do lorries try to overtake each other up long hills on dual carriageways? Sure, if you are behind something going much slower it's worth it but why bother when you have the same 56mph terminal velocity?

What is annoying is that the truck being overtaken does not lift to enable the overtake to happen more quickly. A little bit of consideration towards your fellow road user goes a very long way.

This! Truck drivers spend 99% of their time with the cruise control on. Once I get a truck with radar cruise control I will be happy to sit behind the truck in front if he's doing less than a km/h slower than me. It really annoys me when other drivers don't lift for just half a second to let the passing truck past, especially on a section of two lane carriageway. If other trucks are going just a smidge slower than me I will often try wait for a hill and dip the clutch to pass them at a quicker rate, especially seeing as people seem to be so careful going downhill with their digital tacho's with overspeed recording that potentially gives them trouble from their employers - lucky i work for a speed obsessed farmer!

s p a c e m a n said:

I now overtake almost as many fking cars as I do other HGVs. Do you know how annoying it is having to sit in the outside lsne holding traffic up just because some tt wants to do 54mph in their car, if they did 2mph more no lorries would have to overtake them.

And now the other thing that needs pointing out is that we are now not just overtaking single lorries, theres always at least one car behind speed matching the lorry so we have to overtake something 150ft long rather than 50ft.

Car drivers, you're in fking cars and 5mph will make no difference to your mpg so stop being dicks.

Agreed 100%. Often tiny little cars driven by people who clearly don't have much confidence behind the wheel. The problem is, its more dangerous to be in a car that size in my blind spot (especially in traffic, with rain on the mirrors, in the dark - very hard to keep track of what tiny car is hiding in my blind spot)

Also, when I'm overtaking said car driver, please don't match my speed, or wait until i get alongside you before you decide to accelerate!



If people want to start a campaign, it should be to ban sainsburys/asda lorries from doing 50mph everywhere and to encourage overtaken drivers to lift a bit.