Why is lorry overtaking not banned?

[heebeegeetee]

Bennet said:

I rarely drive on the motorway during the week. Driving between Manchester and Birmingham yesterday I was struck by the near constant slowdown of traffic caused by lorries overtaking oneanother with a tiny speed differential. (They also often pull out on you in ways that would quickly result in serious road rage if it were a car.)

For the pecious little time difference this must make to their journey, why is this still allowed? Would banning lorry overtaking cause other problems that arent immediately obvious?

(If a massive crane or a grandma is doing sub 50 mph, I'd still support their requirement to overtake.)

Given that there's a third lane available, how can the lorries be causing the slow down?

[Conscript]

heebeegeetee said:

Given that there's a third lane available, how can the lorries be causing the slow down?

It's the reduction of road capacity that causes the slow down.

3 lanes of traffic suddenly have to merge into 1 in order to maintain their speed. This necessitates people checking their mirrors, matching speeds with everyone else and then changing lanes; all of this will cause traffic speeds to drop.

[anonymous-user]

OllieC said:

we are only one more ban away from utopia, one more !

[Steve_F]

I got stuck behind two on the M8 leaving Edinburgh one morning last year, they both ended up on the limiter at 56 side by side and neither would back off. Took over 3 miles before the one overtaking gave up. Common sense took a long time to prevail that day...

Only positive was I was sitting behind an Aston and the noise when both V8s took off was rather nice!

[berlintaxi]

Conscript said:

heebeegeetee said:

Given that there's a third lane available, how can the lorries be causing the slow down?

It's the reduction of road capacity that causes the slow down.

3 lanes of traffic suddenly have to merge into 1 in order to maintain their speed. This necessitates people checking their mirrors, matching speeds with everyone else and then changing lanes; all of this will cause traffic speeds to drop.

[oldnbold]

As others have said, its works very well in Germany, but it also applies to cars towing trailers, including caravans. I also seem to remember that it only applies on certain streaches and at certain times. But then again lane disipline in Germany is so much better then the UK.

I think it should be applied on all 2 lane roads in the UK from 06.00 - 19.00.

[Dodsy]

mcgandalf said:

A34 northbound at East Ilsley.

Great idea, but generally ignored IME

[Conscript]

berlintaxi said:

Conscript said:

heebeegeetee said:

Given that there's a third lane available, how can the lorries be causing the slow down?

It's the reduction of road capacity that causes the slow down.

3 lanes of traffic suddenly have to merge into 1 in order to maintain their speed. This necessitates people checking their mirrors, matching speeds with everyone else and then changing lanes; all of this will cause traffic speeds to drop.

Excuse me?

[jmorgan]

Meh. Complainers always gonna complain. When car drivers manage to achieve an ability that actually matches their own perception of themselves, then perhaps debatable.

[T0MMY]

The A14 between Cambridge and the A1 has to be one of the worst for this. bd lorry drivers all overtaking each other when in 10 miles time the road goes from two to four lanes. Total time saving for them doing 56 instead of 55 being about 12 seconds over that sort of distance, in other words they won't even be out of sight of the colleague they just crawled past

The problem is that when one lorry pulls out it creates a huge gap in front of him so other lorries ahead that might not have utilised their 0.001mph speed differential over the one in front think, sod it, may as well overtake then.

I wouldn't mind so much except they also seem to feel such a sense of entitlement about it...if you're alongside them they expect you to just disappear out of their way, as if they would do the same for you.

[blueg33]

I sympathis with the op, I do that stretch of M6 several times and week, and you can see that lorries overtaking cause long tailbacks. In effect they push the cars doing 60 into lane 3 turning the road into a 2 lane motorway. The overatkes can take ages too.

There are also way too many lorries transporting non perishables long distances and really these should be on the railways and then on trucks for local delivery only.

[heebeegeetee]

oldnbold said:

As others have said, its works very well in Germany, but it also applies to cars towing trailers, including caravans. I also seem to remember that it only applies on certain streaches and at certain times. But then again lane disipline in Germany is so much better then the UK.

I think it should be applied on all 2 lane roads in the UK from 06.00 - 19.00.

There are (effectively) no British drivers in Germany. If there were, they'd be bumbling along at much lower speeds as do over here.

I'm sure we're all aware of how on the whole traffic flows so much better in Europe than it does here, and that's because people get much more of a move on.

It's also down to the congestion, which brings me to another point: Anybody who puts a car on the road in the daytime, especially on a motorway, especially in the working week, is part of a huge problem. The vast majority of these journeys by car is so that people can go and talk to each other. Well, you don't need a car to do that.
The numbers of hgvs has not changed since the 1950s but cars have gone from a few million to 28 million and road building has not kept up (and indeed in itself creates traffic)

The is only one vehicle causing the congestion out there, and that is the motor car, driven by us. It is absolutely ludicrous to suggest anything else has any meaningful affect on traffic flow. You might lose seconds or even the odd minute due to a problem here or there per year, but we all cost ourselves hours a week out of our lifetimes.

I do firmly believe that if lorry overtaking was banned the m'ways would grind to a halt, especially at peak times (which in fairness they do already).

Btw, the overtaking has got virtually nothing to do with saving time, and that opinion just shows the lack of understanding of the issue imo. It is about keeping space, vision and safety between vehicles.

[Getragdogleg]

Lets just ban overtaking, no-one is so important that they need to be anywhere faster than anyone else.

[heebeegeetee]

blueg33 said:

I sympathis with the op, I do that stretch of M6 several times and week, and you can see that lorries overtaking cause long tailbacks. In effect they push the cars doing 60 into lane 3 turning the road into a 2 lane motorway. The overatkes can take ages too.

There are also way too many lorries transporting non perishables long distances and really these should be on the railways and then on trucks for local delivery only.

The non-perishables are on the railways as well, why on earth would you think they are not?

Not totally against your idea, but you would need twice the numbers of trucks and drivers (which are not available right now), so who pays for that?

Re long distances, I'd suggest it's rare for any one load to do much more than 150 miles in the UK, and on average I doubt it's more than about 100. A lorry can do 100 miles in a couple of hours, but if you're putting it on the train I'd say it'd take an hour or two to load the train.

[Conscript]

heebeegeetee said:

The is only one vehicle causing the congestion out there, and that is the motor car, driven by us. It is absolutely ludicrous to suggest anything else has any meaningful affect on traffic flow. You might lose seconds or even the odd minute due to a problem here or there per year, but we all cost ourselves hours a week out of our lifetimes.

Maybe in the grand scheme of things, but that's not really a true in the context of the OP.

A three lane motorway is reduced to one lane by the actions of a lorry attempting a slow overtake. As a result, traffic backs up as other motorists try and pass in the remaining lane. Yes, you're right, that traffic wouldn't back up if there were less motorists on the road, but in that specific situation, you wouldn't say that's the only cause.

If there were an accident that blocked 2 lanes of a motorway, and the result was a traffic jam, would you say that the accident had no meaningful effect on traffic flow?

Would that be justification for not bothering to mitigate accidents on the basis that the only reason the traffic flow was disrupted was due to the amount of cars, not the accident itself?

I beg your pardon if I've somehow missed your point.

Edited by Conscript on Friday 16th January 13:30

[blueg33]

heebeegeetee said:

blueg33 said:

I sympathis with the op, I do that stretch of M6 several times and week, and you can see that lorries overtaking cause long tailbacks. In effect they push the cars doing 60 into lane 3 turning the road into a 2 lane motorway. The overatkes can take ages too.

There are also way too many lorries transporting non perishables long distances and really these should be on the railways and then on trucks for local delivery only.

The non-perishables are on the railways as well, why on earth would you think they are not?

Not totally against your idea, but you would need twice the numbers of trucks and drivers (which are not available right now), so who pays for that?

Re long distances, I'd suggest it's rare for any one load to do much more than 150 miles in the UK, and on average I doubt it's more than about 100. A lorry can do 100 miles in a couple of hours, but if you're putting it on the train I'd say it'd take an hour or two to load the train.

I agree, trains are best for non urgent non perishables, but I am pretty sure that there is spare freight capacity on the raols especially outside peak hours.

I had one site near a canal, bricks and concrete planks I arranged to have delivered by barge. It worked a treat, every delivery was on time

[ManOpener]

I don't think it causes too much of an issue as long as the lorry drivers don't do what I observed on the M40 near (IIRC) Burtley Wood two weeks ago, where the individual who was "overtaking" (I use the word very, very loosely) sat with his cab parallel with that of the lorry he was passing for a good few miles, presumably whilst they had a natter about something extremely unimportant, and a huge queue of passing traffic built up in L3.

[Dodsy]

I have had to drive to peterborough a lot recently and its frustrating to be stuck behind lorries for mile after mile at 40. Then you reach a hill and there are 2 lanes going up. So one lorry decides to try and overtake the one in front. But its a steep hill and not very long and he doesnt make it so he gets alongside then slows down and pulls back in when it goes back to 1 lane.

[T0MMY]

heebeegeetee said:

...

Btw, the overtaking has got virtually nothing to do with saving time, and that opinion just shows the lack of understanding of the issue imo. It is about keeping space, vision and safety between vehicles.

I'm in that not understanding camp. Why exactly, if they're not trying to save time, do they overtake? If they're approaching the back of another lorry at 0.1mph surely they can just back off infinitesimally to maintain a safe gap? If they really cared primarily about vision etc. they're going about it the wrong way as they're deliberately reducing their gap for some time in order to get close enough to overtake.

Also I'll have to remember that lorry drivers are so conscientious about gaps next time I have one 1m off my bumper in traffic or trying to push into a gap that isn't there to do one of their safety overtakes.

[heebeegeetee]

Conscript said:

Maybe in the grand scheme of things, but that's not really a true in the context of the OP.

A three lane motorway is reduced to one lane by the actions of a lorry attempting a slow overtake.

No. For the majority of the time on most of the m'ways in the uk in the working week, lane 1 is full and so is lane 2 pretty much - and also lane 3, and thus it slows down as a result.

You cannot squeeze all that traffic into lane 1, and if you did it would slow to a crawl, and the other 2 lanes would be passing at 15mph higher speeds respectively.

The idea that we'd have a free flowing m'way were it not for one lorry passing another is as wrong as it can be.