18 metre lorries

[Simba]

They have been approved by the government, the source was in Cycling Weekly. As if the 16 metre ones aren't bad enough for us.

 

[Globalti]

Why? Just don't creep up the inside. They are trying to bring you the bike bits and consumer goods you want to buy but more efficiently and at a cheaper price.

 

[dellzeqq]

Lee - answer me this. Are wagon and drags better able to negotiate corners than artics? I'd always thought that they were the safer option but......I was following a wagon and drag (UK registered) round a roundabout in Dartford on Sunday, and, if I'd overtaken the thing this post would be in a much smaller typeface.....

 

[Night Train]

I did my C+E in a rigid and drawbar (wagon and drag) and I found it easier then an artic as the trailer took a line closer to that of the truck.

It does vary considerably though when you take into account long and short trailers on an artic, the amount of rear overhang on the semi-trailer, the length of the drawbar trailer relative to the rigid truck, the number of axles and overhang on the trailer and whether it is a turntable trailer, so a general 'are they better' is a difficult one to answer.

The truck I learnt in was long with a short trailer.

I have no immediate issue with long trucks so long as there is a level of sense in where they are used and other road users are aware of the amount of road space they will need

 

[CamPhil]

The amount of cornering clearance required is a direct product of the longest section, so the new longer trailers will need more cornering space.
In particular, the rear overhang is greater, and this means that the tail will swing further out in the opposite direction of the turn.
Junctions all over the country have been designed based on the previous vehicle geometry, so the new longer vehicles will need more space than is actually designed into the road layout.
I hope every last one of them gets jammed in narrow lanes and has to be cut up and removed in pieces. At least the scrap would be less dangerous.

Philip Hammond denied this when getting approval from the house, despite having had the details of the geometry displayed to him in detail with scale models - in other words, he knew perfectly well and chose to lie to the house.

Shame we can't lose the output from his disastrous tenure at DfT, now we've got rid of him and his lies.
There is an epetition at the epetitions government site calling for this "trial" of dangerously oversized vehicles to be terminated immediately.
Anyone with any concern for road safety should be signing it.

We were promised less truck traffic with the increase in MGVW to 44 tonnes, and got the opposite. Larger vehicles are more dangerous, full stop.

It is purely putting haulage profits ahead of lives, and I wouldn't mourn if Philip Hammond fell under one, if that's what it took to get them scrapped.

 

[Lurker]

The amount of cornering clearance required is a direct product of the longest section, so the new longer trailers will need more cornering space.
In particular, the rear overhang is greater, and this means that the tail will swing further out in the opposite direction of the turn.
Junctions all over the country have been designed based on the previous vehicle geometry, so the new longer vehicles will need more space than is actually designed into the road layout.
...

Not only that, it's desirable that junctions are redesigned to 'tighten up' the junction geometry in order to force turning vehicles to slow down - thus making junctions safer for cyclists and pedestrians. The DfT itself recognises that junctions are a particular hazard for cyclists ("Seventy per cent of injury accidents involving cyclists take place at junctions...", para 9.5.1, 'Cycle Infrastructure Design', LTN 2/08, October 2008).

The question then arises as to why the DfT is - rightly - supporting improved design of junctions in order to make our roads safer while at the same time allowing the use of vehicles the design and dimensions of which are unsuitable for these safer designs and which will tend to encourage highway engineers to design (or continue to accept) inherently unsafe junction designs.

 

[dellzeqq]

to my way of thinking it's less about the trucks than it is about the drivers. If you look at the obvious - of the deaths caused by trucks, the majority are short vehicles, not artics. Proper transport companies employ drivers with no convictions, no drink problems and lay down the law on how these immense things should be driven.

Whatever one thinks of Asda as a company, as someone who is regularly passed by their enormous articulated trucks on a road peppered with roundabouts the drivers are superb, and that must be because somebody somewhere has made a decision. And, then again, we have Thames Materials, serial killers, driving (Lee will correct me here if I'm wrong) 12 metre un-articulated trucks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Materials

 

[jonesy]

Not only that, it's desirable that junctions are redesigned to 'tighten up' the junction geometry in order to force turning vehicles to slow down - thus making junctions safer for cyclists and pedestrians. The DfT itself recognises that junctions are a particular hazard for cyclists ("Seventy per cent of injury accidents involving cyclists take place at junctions...", para 9.5.1, 'Cycle Infrastructure Design', LTN 2/08, October 2008).

The question then arises as to why the DfT is - rightly - supporting improved design of junctions in order to make our roads safer while at the same time allowing the use of vehicles the design and dimensions of which are unsuitable for these safer designs and which will tend to encourage highway engineers to design (or continue to accept) inherently unsafe junction designs.

It is often possible to tighten up junction geometry to reduce speed while proving an over-run area, using raised setts for example, to allow long vehicles space to turn slowly.

 

[Lurker]

It is often possible to tighten up junction geometry to reduce speed while proving an over-run area, using raised setts for example, to allow long vehicles space to turn slowly.

Yes, I've seen a photo of that from the European mainland. I've never seen it in the UK (though have suggested it in a consultation response) and it seems a sensible solution. From what I've seen in the UK, the preferred 'solution' often seems to be to install guardrailing, in order to prevent 'overruning' - but as we know that introduces its own hazards for cyclists, as well as inconveniencing pedestrians (and being ugly).

 

[Richard Mann]

It is often possible to tighten up junction geometry to reduce speed while proving an over-run area, using raised setts for example, to allow long vehicles space to turn slowly.

I'm afraid the norm in this country is to do what's cheapest to maintain: blacktop and 100mm kerbs outside the tracked area. However many "modern" side roads have massively bigger radii than is necessary for the large-vehicle traffic: these can perfectly well be tightened up, with the occasional large vehicle just occupying the full road width. Not cheap, but not a maintenance liability, either.

We've had more success with installing shallow humps and informal ped crossings over side road mouths. Drivers prefer to take humps perpendicularly if they can, so the effective radius is quite tight.