"Hero" driver deliberately jack-knifed vehicle to avoid hitting cyclists, writing off £2 million supercar cargo

Depends tbh.
Unlike regulated transport, movement of freight by road (except STGO) is mainly at the drivers discretion.

Scotland has recently brought in movement orders that effectively prevented HGVs from moving during high winds - although these had to be severe and it proved to be somewhat counter productive as we ended up with trucks on their sides on the moors as not everywhere has places of safety big enough for an artic to shelter.

Remember that there is only 2 motorway service stations in the entire central belt of Scotland - on in Stirling on the M9 and one at Harthill on the M8.

This had significant cost to the economy as the winds lasted several days and goods couldn't get delivered.

Edit: not sure if Lesmahagow on the M74 is still there or not.
There is services further South on the M74, but they are Borders and not Central

How does it affect your pay if you refuse a trip? Is not the typical response to find someone who will take it? 
 

P45 was the normal response.

However, and with all due respect to your experience, it is also possible for jackknifing to be caused by poor braking, steering, lack of concentration and/or excessive speed for the road and/or conditions, is it not? Given that the weather reports shared above appear to demonstrate that there was nowhere near enough wind at the time to cause jackknifing, isn't it a bit odd that the police and the driver appear to agree that it's just one of those things?

I wasn't there.
I don't know know what vehicle he was driving.
I do not know how his load was configured.
I've never driven his vehicle so I don't k know the little quirks that it may have.

What I do know is that jacknives are caused by multiple scenarios, including loss of control caused by runaway tipping trailers, as well as hard breaking and turning the steering wheel too hard.
They can also be caused by uneven road surfaces, uneven brake wear, uneven tyre depth.

They can also happen when maneuvering at slow speeds.

They can also be done deliberately - I've had 2 x TEUs on a skeleton loaded back to back. The front TEU had to be unloaded by jacknifing the tractor so they could open the doors as the trailer would have been too unstable.

And again, with the caveat of I wasn't there, the police would have checked the tacho head which will have showed speed and how hard the brakes were being applied.  Many modern lorries also have telemetric measuring devices to show harshness of braking, poor accelaration patterns etc, and also cameras which, if available, the police would also review.

The positive from this was no one was injured badly.

tigersnapper wrote:

And again, with the caveat of I wasn't there, the police would have checked the tacho head which will have showed speed and how hard the brakes were being applied.  Many modern lorries also have telemetric measuring devices to show harshness of braking, poor accelaration patterns etc, and also cameras which, if available, the police would also review.

The positive from this was no one was injured badly.

If there are no injuries, then their investigation is usually "brief" shall we say.

Not always. VOSA can investigate too. 

Depends on the age of the vehicle as to what the tacho recorded.

I came out just as digital graphs were installed, and given that the paper chart was there to record speed, distance, driving hours /work type, I'd have thought that it's highly unlikely that the haulage industry has become more prosperous... g-force sensors would be an added extra that would do little to pay for themselves.

Correct. The tacho would be the first thing to be checked, as you state, if it was a modern truck it would have had the latest digital tacho installed, which shows all the telemetrics. It can all be checked very quickly, the police, and VOSA have devices that they can point at the sensor and read the data.

Well oddly, my bus route to work, along the seafront clifftops on a dual carriageway, in a double decker, regularly experiences sidewind gusts up to 50mph in winter (much more than that and they close the road) and they all seem to be able to keep it in their lane.

Just saying.

Double decker buses are tested differently to HGV as they are passenger vehicles.

"...be capable of leaning, fully laden on top, at an angle of 28 deg without toppling over before they are allowed on the road."

Feel free to Google UK double decker tilt test.

If however his trailer was fishtailing, and they then blame low winds of 8m/s for tipping it, I smell someone not telling the entire truth.
Wind may be a minor factor but I suspect speed and poor loading of the trailer (too much weight behind trailer axles)

And if poor load distribution was an issue, plod would have done the driver for it.

Let's not forget ... traffic police hate trucks more than most car drivers.
I've had traffic officers rubbing their hands in glee as they have approached me on routine stops, expecting to be able to get an infringement or two ... and then coming away disappointed because I always - absofeckingloutley - drove legal and would refuse to drive anything that I could see had a problem.

I appreciate your in depth replies from experience.

If the source hadn't been the mail, I'd be less sceptical.
I think if I'd been involved in something that resulted in 1m damage, I'd be emphasising the bits I couldn't control and be downplaying the bits I could.

I hate that it's in the Mail ... means that I can't go and read the article (refuse to give them the click revenue and don't trust their cookie refusal).

Trucks don't fall over *all* the time. It is rare, and when they do, there is normally a trigger.

Personally, having driven car transporters and hated it, and having been blown over, I'd rather hope that this is the case, than the driver was distracted and did a full lock stop that went wrong.

There was times that I'd fecked up - I once had a 50 gallon drum of trichoclorinethanate (sorry if spelt wrong) fall over because a forklift driver wouldn't move it, and I couldn't fully restrain it. Did my best, and was almost back to the yard when my red Susie failed and the trailer brakes came on*.
Luckily, the lid held or it would have been a major chemical incident.

* this is a very, very, very good reason *not* to tailgate an artic.
The red Susie is the emergency airline. If this is interrupted, the trailer brakes fail to safe - as in come on.
There is no brake lights, just a rapidly decelerating trailer in a big cloud of black rubber smoke.
Normally results in new underwear for anyone in the area when it happens, and a blocked road until a mechanic get get there.
Red Susies were not part of the vehicle brakedown kit.

You might not know this, but you can only get 2 cars after the rear axels on a UK spec articulated car transporter trailer.
There were at least 5 cars on the trailer, so there would have been more weight before the rear axles than after it.

Personally, I would doubt snaking caused by weight distribution.

But ... as none of us were there... we don't know and we're all pissing in the breeze.

Read the replies regarding digital tacho readings. If he had done something wrong, do not fear, it would have been reported on given the load which was written off.

oldfatgit wrote:

And this accident was investigated - driver was breathalysed and was negative.

I do wonder whether mobile phone distraction has overtaken alcohol as a likely companion to RTAs. Of course it is right that drivers should be breathalysed as standard procedure, but I think it's time they were likewise phonealysed too, every time.

I don't disagree there.

However... when driving a large vehicle, there is so much more going on that can take your attention from the windscreen.
You spend an awful lot of time looking in the mirrors so you can plan ahead for overtakes, make sure you've not caught anything, load is secure etc...

The actual act of driving the vehicle can be a distraction itself.

Lorry transport doesn't sound like a safe means of doing things from all that you're saying. 

Try googling the number of HGV movements a day against the number of accidents where the HGV has been the cause.

I drove around 100,000 miles a year for 15 years.
The number of accidents I had - that I had a direct input in to - was 1.
The number of times blown over - 2
Insecure load - 1 partial.
Lost load - 0
Bridges bashed - 0
Pedestrians I hit - 0
Pedestrians who hit me - 1 (central London, zombie walking. Walked in to my trailer when I was turning right)
Cyclists I hit - 0
Cyclists who hit me - 1 (outside King's Cross. I was static, chap rode in to the back of me)
Cars I hit - 1 (hit a speeding taxi while pulling off from the kerb, World's End, Fulham)
Cars who hit me - 5. Including a Metro who drove in to the side of my 75ft long trailer, loaded with sectional steel)

Transporting goods by road is safe enough.

The 4-5 people killed on the roads yesterday, today and tomorrow might not see it that way.

Having needed CPR 6 times following being hit by a badly driven mondeo while cycling home from work one August evening 2018 and being left with life changing injuries the road safety preach to me wasn't *really* required.
[Feel free to go back through my post history, I've mentioned it enough, pictures and all].

However ... this driver attempted to avoid causing fatalities.

Seems he got that wrong too ...

Oh, I've got enough experience on the roads to understand that lorries can be a handful in the wrong conditions and there are circumstances where events cause unavoidable crashes through no fault, but here we have a driver suggesting there were no unexpected and exceptional external events and under gentle braking to control his speed he fishtailed which he blamed on a wind - if we accept the lorry driver's version of events, then he is saying he was driving an unstable vehicle.

I think the only exception I would allow for is high sided vehicles with unexpected very strong winds, but only unexpected, because anyone can recognise that they are exposed to the experience you had. Thinking about that experience: what was it that led you to be driving a vehicle where the weather conditions exceeded the design capabilities of the vehicle? Clearly, the windage of a vehicle is calculable, and therefore the maximum safe wind speed can be estimated. Were winds higher than forecast, were you given a safe wind speed for the configuration, were you able to check forecasts before comencing the journey. Was it a consideration?

As you say, car transporters are difficult - they need careful configuring for weight distribution, but more likely they are loaded for best fit, with modern cars weighing neigh on 3 tonnes each, with a determination to fit as many cars on as possible. The cars are sprung and move independently. Whose responsibility is it to ensure that the lorry can be safely driven on the roads? To argue that it is wrong to criticise the incident because you haven't experienced how hard it is to drive, is to suggest that it is acceptable to have unstable vehicles on the road. The driver may well just have been following orders, but in the end, someone decided to load the trailer in a way that was unstable in normal driving conditions. What do hauliers use to calculate the weight distribution and safe towing distribution? Or do they just test for fit? Do they leave it to the driver? Given that they are inherently unstable, doesn't this imply that the hauliers and lorry designers are putting inappropriate vehicles on the road - trying to fit too many cars onto one (or more) trailers, for the sake of cost over safety?

Cycling in strong wind, yes we expect to be moved about, and generally, where winds are exceptional, it is quite predictable how you will be blown about, mainly by gates. I would not ride in very strong winds, and also I never ride with deep rims - just not appropriate for social riding - so I ameliorate the risks.

So, with your experience as a lorry driver, when is it acceptable to despatch a vehicle that can crash in normal conditions due to no fault of the driver? That's my fundamental point.

Put another way, to be clear, my point is that it is bizarre to accept that it is OK for lorries to be sent out where crashes can occur with an apparently experienced and careful lorry driver. My point is that it is ridiculous to have vehicles on the road which are inherently unstable by design and or by operational requirements.

In part, my experience of Health and Safety comes from being around steel works in the 1980s. Like down the mines, there was an attitude that deaths and serious injuries were part of the job, and it required a zero tolerance mindset to accidents to change to not killing people being the norm. All I am saying is that attitude clearly does not exist in the trasnport industry, much as it does not exist in the motoring population in general - as evinced by the fact that we have 2,000,000 settled claims for damage a year and numerous deaths yet attempts to change the status quo is resisted as somehow unnecessary.

In the road haulage world ... you are given the keys.
That's it.
I'm sure performance curves exist for various trailer configurations ... but you don't get them, and be highly surprised if the company that owns the trailer has them.

As far as employers are concerned - you are the driver.
You are legally responsible for the vehicle and its load.
You are responsible for ensuring it has VED, MoT and that everything works the way it should do.

The driver has very large shoulders, wears many hats and is the biggest legal scapegoat you will ever find

That was the attitude in the early 90s and I daresay it is the same now.

Sorry if loads unanswered ... on a mobile and cooking dinner

Let's go with that assumption.

We can agree that loading a car transporter is a skilled task. I would assume that the main contractors for JLR and the like have loading plans to account for weight and size

This sounds like a mixed load being transported for an experience day company. What are the chances nobody planned the load? What are the chances that the loader (not necessarily the driver) had the skills to load appropriately? Does the trailer have the tools to assess the load - e.g. weight sensors on axles and tractor?

My point is that it seems the industry is set up to fail and aside from a few gripes I've seen from the police about overloaded transporters in Twitter, it's just happening, made worse with autobesity. (Presumably transporters have also got taller due to cars being bigger - a double whammy).

Is it even appropriate to allow a car transporter to carry 40 tonnes - should they be limited to a lower level given the various issues?

Neither lorry drivers nor the public should be put in the position of accepting this.

AFAIK ... the only trailers with load sensors are tippers.
That's because you need to weight the body independently from the rest of the vehicle and the only way you can do that is by a sensor on the hydraulic system.
For everything else, there are weighbridges.

I used to plan my load.
I would direct the forklift / crane operator to where I wanted the load placed based on the paperweight of each pallet.
It's a very rare occurance for a company to have scales and weigh pallets so drivers have exact weights ..
Plus the guys loading the truck don't give a fouck; they also don't have time to feck around. They either load you, put you back in the queue for 6 hours or or send you away empty. [Tescos at Crick were bustards for this].

If you have concerns, you go to the weighbridge, pay your fiver and get weighed.
If you are over weight, it's back to the yard and have the extra unloaded ... if they will do it.
Most of the time it's a case of "you left with it, it's your responsibility" to the driver.

I don't have the time or the words to express just how messed up the general haulage industry is.

Special jobs - like this was - the driver would have planned the load depending on drop order / weight distribution if all going to the same place.

*assumptions based on experience as I wasn't there*
The driver would have driven the cars on to the trailer as he would have been the only person insured to be on it; the driver would have secured the cars by either load point straps or wheel straps or both depending on the type of car being secured.

Load weight, security and distribution are not being challenging in this case by the police.

If you consider that that road haulage is placing the public at avoidable risk, contact your MP, the Fleet Operators Association and the Road Haulage Association.

Don't bother with the the HSE as they aren't interested as they class it as a police/ VOSPA problem, not theirs.
(Unless it's an occurance that is RIDDORable and even then, as I found out .. they ain't interested)

Completely echo this. My Dad and uncle drove HGVs for decades between them. Only incidents they ever had were a blow over on a curtain-sider. Dad's blew over onto a road sign which pierced the cab, fortunately missing him. I did a few trips with them over the years and it's a collossly tricky job with a huge amount of responsibility.
Cross winds are like going past a farm gate riding deep section wheels but just magnified with 400x the mass.

Oldfatgit wrote:

I hated every single second I was towing a car transporter trailer.
They are fecking horrible to tow as their sail area is unpredictable....trains and planes are normally stopped when winds exceed their operational safety limits.

Ah so car trailers are unsafe and those who operate them don't do anything to mitigate this?