Gritters, which methodology?

[MidlandDan84]

Whilst returning home along the A3 lastnight, in the distance I spotted a Gritter in the inside lane of three, and immediately thought 'Oh F4cking Great'. Indeed I may have been going a touch quicker than 70mph, but I then had a battle inside my head, do I speed up and pass the Gritter as quickly as possible, though also receiving a full dose of grit at full velocity, or slow down and hang well back, only problem is the Gritter is travelling at less than 40mph I would imagine.

Slow or fast? which is best?

[illmonkey]

Speed isn't going to be good. Creeping past it is probably the best idea, staying well back from any other car going past too.

[sherman]

Move tp lane 3 and batter past.

[Don]

Hang back, take another route.

[MidlandDan84]

My plan was, much to the annoyance of the missus, was to wait until a van or HGV came into distnace and then follow that past the gritter, only problem was it was about 2030hrs and all the truckers had gone to bed

So i battered past, now with a few stone chips, but if id hung back i would have get even more grit!.

[louiebaby]

Hard shoulder if on a motorway???

[MidlandDan84]

The A3 does have a hardshoulder, however just parking up and waiting for the Gritter to pass might be extreme, plus im not sure if the Old Bill would classify it as an 'Emergency'.

[sleep envy]

Don said:

Hang back, take another route.

bingo

[Jonny671]

I had this dilemma on the A3 not long ago too.. Hammer it past, and so your gritted time is less, but harder impacts or hang back and wait, ages and ages for it to ps off.

I hammered it past, made me cry thinking about the paintwork.

[Adrenochrome]

Had this dilemma myself last week and decided to blast past at pace, it was at night and we were the only vehicles on the road, gritter driver turned his gritty machine off whilst I was going past him

[jains15]

Trouble is if you hang back, even quarter to half a mile, you can still hear the rock salt whanging around in your wheel arches etc, so I say hammer past. Only ever done this when it hasn't been my car though :lol:

[cs02rm0]

I move quickly past without hammering it, hugging the central reservation as tightly as I dare.

[koolchris99]

i hate them. i also got a full does of gritter on the M3 last night..

bds.. the front of my golf now looks like a reverse dalmatian..

[Jonny671]

What about on a single carriage way.. When its coming at you.

That was nasty too, I had no way of getting out the way, front, sides and back.

[LayZ]

Drive sh!tter in the winter, thus don't care about salt/stonechips and hammer past.

[F i F]

I'd go with Don's version...

:small:Although have been known to go up the off slip, and back down the on slip...:/small:

I'm a bad boy.

[Don]

LayZ said:

Drive sh!tter in the winter, thus don't care about salt/stonechips and hammer past.

This also works well. I go for this solution, too.

[sleep envy]

Don said:

LayZ said:

Drive sh!tter in the winter, thus don't care about salt/stonechips and hammer past.

This also works well. I go for this solution, too.

only problem is you tend to drive the stter a little too often, as I've found in the past

[Matt UK]

Wait for someone in a company car and then tuck into their slipstream

[Fastra]

Matt UK said:

Wait for someone in a company car and then tuck into their slipstream

Naughty, but +1!!

... and stay as far on the right of the lane as possible!