Near Miss of the Day 240: Traffic calming gone wrong?

ktache wrote:

The infrastructure is not great.  But it is the professional driver who made a consious decision to overtake there, nothing else.

Proffessional Driver is possibly stretching it. Just a bloke from the warehouse with a standard license with no extra training and pressure to deliver pharmaceuticals to various chemists. The same can be applied to all the couriers out there in their long wheelbase transits. It’s about time that anyone without a PCV or HGV licence and gets paid to drive and run messages in a motorised vehicle actually sits a form of extended test before they are employed as a driver. 

giff77 wrote:

ktache wrote:

The infrastructure is not great.  But it is the professional driver who made a consious decision to overtake there, nothing else.

Proffessional Driver is possibly stretching it. Just a bloke from the warehouse with a standard license with no extra training and pressure to deliver pharmaceuticals to various chemists. The same can be applied to all the couriers out there in their long wheelbase transits. It’s about time that anyone without a PCV or HGV licence and gets paid to drive and run messages in a motorised vehicle actually sits a form of extended test before they are employed as a driver. 

Whatever, the employing company still has an obligation under health and safety legislation, to have practicable systems in place to control risk to thier employees and the gerneral public. If they're  driving commercial vehicles in public you would think that this should be more than just checking they have a licence.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg382.pdf

Deeferdonk wrote:

giff77 wrote:

ktache wrote:

The infrastructure is not great.  But it is the professional driver who made a consious decision to overtake there, nothing else.

Proffessional Driver is possibly stretching it. Just a bloke from the warehouse with a standard license with no extra training and pressure to deliver pharmaceuticals to various chemists. The same can be applied to all the couriers out there in their long wheelbase transits. It’s about time that anyone without a PCV or HGV licence and gets paid to drive and run messages in a motorised vehicle actually sits a form of extended test before they are employed as a driver. 

Whatever, the employing company still has an obligation under health and safety legislation, to have practicable systems in place to control risk to thier employees and the gerneral public. If they're  driving commercial vehicles in public you would think that this should be more than just checking they have a licence.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg382.pdf

Except the Health and Safety representatives in all these companies are doing a pretty shit job in ensuring that employees who have access to company vehicles actually drive within the guidelines of the Highway Code and obey the Highways Act. Daily most of us have some interaction with motorists of liveried private class vehicles who drive with impunity towards other road users. It never ceases to amaze me that people drive shockingly while behind the wheel of a marked vehicle. 

I stand by my comment that if somebody is to drive for a living on a standard licence they should sit an extended test or their employers put them through a recognised in-house test before they are handed a set of keys.

burtthebike wrote:

I never use Boots unless there is no option since they went off shore and stopped paying tax.

This is just another reason not to use them.

Are there any large companies which *haven't* go offshore to stop paying tax?  I wonder if we should start calling it "Doing a Dyson?"?  

(BTW, what do you use as an alternative to Boots?)

brooksby wrote:

burtthebike wrote:

I never use Boots unless there is no option since they went off shore and stopped paying tax.

This is just another reason not to use them.

Are there any large companies which *haven't* go offshore to stop paying tax?  I wonder if we should start calling it "Doing a Dyson?"?  

(BTW, what do you use as an alternative to Boots?)

Lloyds.  I've been using them for years in prefernce to Boots because, when I was working to promote active travel, they took our leaflets and featured active travel in their magazine.  Boots refused.  They seemed far more interested in keeping their customers healthy, when Boots seemed to want to keep them sick to sell them more overpriced snake oil.

burtthebike wrote:

Like the other comments, I agree that the only way to tackle them is to take prime position, central in the lane, well before the island, but this requires experience, nerves of steel and faith that one driver having a bad day cares enough not to kill you.  No novice rider would do this and would be subject to many of these passes, and would probably give up after a day.

glad you highlighted the nerves of steel bit, because its not just novice riders who struggle taking prime in those cases, as you are basically putting your whole trust in the driver of the vehicle behind, to then make that choice not to drive into you, when the only reason you are making that move into prime in the first place is because you actually dont trust them at all that left to their own devices they will make the right safe decisions.

I had a very close pass near one of those things last year, closest Ive been to being another KSI statistic for a while, and Id swear the car actually drove over the island, because I was well into a prime position, there wasnt a car sized gap next to me and the kerb of the island, but the car was coming through regardless and somehow warped space and time and did

dassie wrote:

I say we in good time, shoulder-check, indicate, take the lane - and stop the dangerous pinch point manoeuvres. It's the only way to be sure.

It's what I do...

 

Indicate what?

Kendalred wrote:

PS - Skipton is North Yorkshire, not West.

It's north of Watford Gap, so it's just "up north" innit bruv.