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Can any truckers confirm this a plausible event? A friend of mine is a RM HGV driver, hes working at the moment but I'll ask him later.
And this actually happened to his daughter. Truck pulled up behind her corsa at lights, very close, forgot she was there apparently, pushed her 300m along the road before he realised.
Extra scary if you think of bikes in close proximity to hgvs.
This one's betterer: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1553964/Truck-carries-wheelchair-user-on-50mph-ride.html
I've seen this happen before, on the m25 some years ago. As I drove past in lane three, I saw the car in lane two waving madly at the trucker who had a car in front just like that.
Terrifying.
Think there's a few You Tube vids of this happening - here you go:
Doh!
That link wasn't working for me, but Googled and found it:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-50819996
Of course, at the end, "Police say no crime was committed"
A lorry hit the back of my car on the M1/M62 interchange near Leeds a few years ago. We both joined the motorway from different bits that merge in the same place ish. I was in lane 1, he was in lane 2 and wanted to move over to lane 1. He had no idea I was there, I could see he was going to start coming across but I couldn't go any where as there was another truck in front of me and If i'd have braked I'd have ended up under the side of the wagon that hit me. Luckily he only glanced the rear corner of my car, if he'd hit any further forward he could have spun me round and pushed me along like the vid above.
I was driving an estate VW Passat as well so not like it was a small car!!
clearly the Golf driver's error. no sign of hi viz anywhere and neither of them were wearing helmets.
Sit in any car and take your time to look at what you can't see, put objects in front of it, then scale it up to truck proportions and you see how you can lose an entire car.
Ignoring the sight here, would the driver not notice the change in how the truck drove? Surely he'd be needing more power to accelerate and would have noticed that?
depends on how good the porn he's watching is...
As a hgv driver there's no excuse to not see that and yes he would most definitely feel the resistance of pushing a car along.
Every truck has a down facing mirror that shows anything immediately in front of you... Its there to spot pedestrians and cyclists that pop up in front of you at traffic lights etc when stationary... Its an offence to not have it set up correctly as far as I'm aware.
If he doesn't get the sack I'll be surprised
Transporter thanks, reassuring to know that's a thing! Do you think its effective though?
I've wondered if the driver would feel the resistance, must be quite a lot from pushing around a 1.5-2 tonne metal box with rubber feet but then maybe the extra power on hand (if the HGV was empty) means you can't? Would have thought there'd be a smell of burning rubber and noise to.
Then again shortly after I passed my test I drove my car a few miles with the handbrake on thinking it just felt a bit sluggish so I'm not one to criticise :p
Most definitely effective.. We're taught to check all our mirrors at least every 10 seconds when training.. Now even if you let that lapse there's no excuse imo to jot know he was there...
The guy in the golf is actually an employee of car throttle which makes videos on YouTube so some good could come from this... If they are savvy then they could get together with royal mail and seize the opportunity to show how dangerous trucks can be
transporter13
Every truck has a down facing mirror that shows anything immediately in front of you
yup, if you look carefully at the video you can see he has one. clearly not using it though.
That link wasn’t working for me
Fixed now.
I once ran over my daughter scooter that she left in front of my car. I had no idea it was there.
It's the same for full size bikes with full size adults aboard in a truck.. And yet the amount of rediculous manoeuvres I see cyclists doing around large vehicles is scary.. Whilst seemingly on the increase instead of the other way around.
Had no idea about the forward mirror.
The length some people will go to meet an attractive pop star eh?
Truck mirrors are amazingly good compared with car mirrors, you can see everything except what is immediately behind you whilst driving forwards as per transporter13 this is deliberately not looking , a damaged mirror would be a fix before work and extra caution driving to get it fixed.
If he doesn’t get the sack I’ll be surprised
Unintentional pun of the year 🙂
I wondered whether you'd notice it or not. HGV's are pretty noisy, and as others said it's pretty easy to drive a car with the handbrake on and only prercieve it as a bit sluggish, the throttle isn't like pedaling a bike where even a slightly rubbing brake makes itself felt. I imagine 20 tons (or it's absence) of stuff in the back probably makes more difference.
I had a front brake seize on a car and didn't notice until there was no pad material left.
Yes it's possible.
I pulled into a carpark to see a truck sweep around far end where my colleague had parked his Mondeo Estate. The truck pushed the car across car park until I stopped him by pulling in the way in my minibus.
The colleague arrived, in another minibus to find me arguing with trucker who wanted to leave.
The thing is, colleague and I were teaching new staff to pass thier minibus and trailer tests. My colleague was an ex traffic officer....
Cue an interesting few minutes while truck_mr worked out this was the case as my colleague began checking his operator licence and asking about tachograph...
I drive a bus, which is a bit lighter than a truck (fully loaded, including trailer, hitting c24tons)
Could it pull/push a car without noticing extra throttle? Yes, easily.
Do I believe for a second that it would actually happen at the front of the vehicle? No, you would hear it.
I have been a passenger in a town bus (only 9 tons) that rear ended a car, i barely felt it, but I certainly heard it.
I’m struggling to believe that ‘honest yer honour, I didn’t see it’ will wash in court.
The buses i drive range from 420-500hp.
Plenty of trucks have considerably more.
As a hgv driver there’s no excuse to not see that and yes he would most definitely feel the resistance of pushing a car along.
Every truck has a down facing mirror that shows anything immediately in front of you… Its there to spot pedestrians and cyclists that pop up in front of you at traffic lights etc when stationary…
I drive a Daf CF almost identical to the one involved. If he was on cruise control then this would detect a slight drop in speed and increase the power automatically. As quoted above regarding the mirror Its there to spot pedestrians and cyclists that pop up in front of you at traffic lights etc when stationary…..... I can see no reason why a driver would even consider looking in this mirror at 40 mph in what he considered to be normal circumstances. Loud music in the cab could mask the noise of the tyres screeching. As shown in picture, it's quite feasible that the car was below his eye-line. If you look at other sideswipe videos like this they often occur very slowly so there might not be much of an impact to feel. 
transporter13 is mostly right about the driver should have noticed the extra drag. In that size of truck the extra tonne or so should be noticeable but it could be easy enough to miss if it has a torquey engine. Anything larger and the percentage change in weight gets less so it's easier to not notice immediately. We had a gentle reminder given to the HGV drivers in work this morning about this as we've had 2 of these incidents as a company in the last year. I've seen the on-board CCTV of one of them involving a Mercedes Axor that was loaded up to 24 tonnes. It collected a Fiat 500 that turned across it in traffic and, as switchbacktrog says, there was barely any impact detectable from the cab. It was also small enough to be well below the sight line of the driver, even the cameras had a tough time seeing it and they're mounted higher up than the driver sits! The truck was doing 65 kph at the time and the tacho trace shows a drop of 1kph at the time, for an idea of how little this is it showed a bigger drop in speed over a rough patch of road shortly before. When the Smart ForTwo first came out there were a few instances of drivers not seeing them and pushing them forward at traffic lights! There was also on instance in rural France of a driver driving out of a rest area and pushing one of those microcars they have along and crushing it, thankfully it was empty. The owner had pulled in front of the truck in such a way that it was completely invisible from the cab. As they weigh 400kgs there was no weight to notice.
If you've never been in a truck cab on the road I suggest you do if the opportunity arises. It's scary how little they can see and what can disappear in a blind spot, the mirrors do help but the driver can only look in one direction at a time. The one mentioned above that looks down the front of the cab is only really useful at walking speeds and is mainly to help with parking manoeuvres and spotting pedestrians and cyclists when stopped at traffic lights and junctions. Also the noise and vibrations inside the cabs on a lot of trucks are enough to give you a sensory overload the first time you experience it, either that or they're so well isolated from the outside that you can't hear much like when you switch on some noise cancelling headphones.. When you have experience of this you find yourself giving trucks much more space and consideration when near one, on foot, bike or in the car.
I'm afraid Ill have to disagree with you about the use of the front mirror.... Quite often in built up traffic you can have all lanes moving at differing speeds... If the nearside lane is moving slightly quicker then I tend to make a mental note of each car that is coming past.. As they can then sit in that blind spot for a good few seconds if the lane speed equalises slightly.. That mirror is there for this reason also as a last line of defence if you will so you can at least have a chance of seeing anything down there.
Now to say you wouldn't feel that at 40mph..ok maybe if you were pulling a trailer for instance but when you're bobtail?
And I'm pretty sure that if my window was open even a few inches like the drivers' was I'd be horrified if I couldn't hear a car scraping down the road near me regardless of what music I was listening to and how loud it was.
I don’t understand how we all seem to accept that “trucks have poor visibility and are dangerous so stay out of the way”
Why can’t we design trucks that have fewer blind spots. It’s like we just accept it and everyone has to live with the danger.
I’m sick of irresponsible truckers ignoring the 7.5 tonne restriction down the road that I walk my kids to school on. The pavement is less than 3 ft wide for a while, a 44 tonne truck doing 30mph past me, my daughter and a pram is quite frankly terrifying. This happens every day I walk to school. Nobody cares.
We need to change the way we th8nk about trucks cars etc. It’s gone on too long that we mustn’t inconvenience trucks and car drivers etc.
Burko73 is it a proper 7.5ton limit or is there wording underneath saying except for access as you'll find a lot more drivers will try their luck if it does say that
Truck mirrors are amazingly good compared with car mirrors, you can see everything except what is immediately behind you whilst driving forwards
Is it worth reposting this?
Have things changed since then? That was five years ago.
The one mentioned above that looks down the front of the cab is only really useful at walking speeds
You might not see it in advance, but if something is attached to your front bumper would that not be visible regardless of speed?
OK when not driving forwards but turning the mirrors of an articulated truck can only show the operator what they are reflecting , they will always show the driven unit , but not the trailer when turning .
People always assume that because they can see you - you can see them , hence unlit cyclists and invisible pedestrians plus the lights off zombie cars when the hour changes.
Is the front mirror wide angle or would it just look down at the dark section of car roof, looking like tarmac at a glance? I have no idea but in the freeze frame above, does the mirror look the right angle to see anything?
would it just look down at the dark section of car roof, looking like tarmac at a glance?
I was thinking similar. An unmoving patch of back that filled the mirror.
This happened to my friends wife a few years back on the M1 in Yorkshire.
Big estate car, she joined from a slip road at the same time as truck driver was pulling back in from the middle lane. Just enough to nudge the rear quarter of the car and spin it across the front. Not sure how he was made aware, but it wasn't instant. Luckily she was completely unhurt but terrified. Not sure what the insurance outcome was either in terms of blame.
I’m no expert but if you had a blind spot like that and the likelihood of so many “invisible” people around on a building site or roadworks site there would be some additional risk mitigation such as a banksman required for manouvering.
The 7.5 tonne restriction is down a 200 m high street with shops so there is potential to be delivering and needing access. I’m not worried about those trucks as they’re generally going slow and needing to stop. They are in the minority though. It’s particularly depressing at school time.
We’ve just come to accept that pedestrians are second best over “the economy”. Our county council will only consider road safety schemes following deaths it seems. It makes me shudder to think what needs to happen to take these issues seriously.
The video of the trucks unknowingly pushing cars along at 60 mph makes me shiver. You just can’t believe that can be allowed to happen.
I've always thought that that video that Cougar posted seems to have a truck with very poorly adjusted mirrors. A large proportion of the mirror is filled with the truck cab. Surely they should be adjusted so that the cab is only just visible giving you the widest possible view? Would be interesting to see how many of those cyclists were still invisible if you did that.
The guy in the golf is actually an employee of car throttle which makes videos on YouTube
Hmm could there be a link I wonder?
Have things changed since then? That was five years ago.
Using a 20 year old V-reg truck, so i'd certainly hope so
The mirrors are pretty much the same as they were 20 years ago. If you make them too big it creates huge blind spots at junctions and roundabouts. This is a recognised issue which is why I always take a second glance before pulling out. Imagine if the "A" pillar in your car was 12" wide.......That's what HGV drivers have to take into account. Some of the latest Mercedes trucks have small cameras on stalks instead of mirrors with a screen mounted on the inside of the "A" pillar. The cameras swivel with the steering so you can keep the end of the trailer in sight on tight corners. The clip below shows it well.
@switchbacktrog
we've had a couple of those on demo lately and they're actually very good..wierd to get used to but better than using mirrors.
I've found the best mirrors for adjustment and being able to see the rear of your trailer when blindside reversing (if in tight spots) is the newer Renault premiums and the worst either scanias or dafs which have a shocking adjustment range really.