Hi there, glad to see you back with me again for the last chapter in this series and I hope that so far you’ve enjoyed the view from the cab of a modern 44-toner?

Have you seen the programme, Ice Road Truckers?   It consists of fascinating tales that were shown on the TV of the guys who drive the big rigs over the frozen lakes of North West Canada each year, taking supplies to the diamond mines.  Thirty years ago I did something similar, but on sand and rock instead of ice.  I used to deliver trucks to the Middle East by driving them overland and with a loaded trailer as a bonus.  I would cross the Jordanian Desert from a place where the tarmac stopped, on a route simply called H4, near Amman, and head across a somewhat dangerous and hostile environment to an oasis on the Saudi border.  If you’ve never been in the middle of nowhere, that’s where it is.

Having coped with soft sands, rock outcrops and dried up river beds called Wadis I would eventually rejoin the tarmac a day or so later.  After that it was only 1,000 miles to go to the Persian Gulf along the Pipeline Road.  This was dead straight, except for 3 bends that occurred just over half way along and where the road went around an oil head.  Guess where the accidents would occur?

I followed this period of my life with a fantastic stint of off-road mountain driving for a Dutch company, Damco Van Swieten of Rotterdam.  Running over the Assir Mountains of the Red Sea coast on goat tracks, and the like, to a then secret airbase.  Often my outside tyres of my trailer would be out in space with drops from a mere half-mile up to 2 miles down to the desert floor below. It was the most exciting driving I’ve ever done and the most dangerous outside of the M25!

Also, and during the course of my divorce, yes I had one of those too, I quit my proper job whilst the house was being sold and went off trucking around Europe for a while.  Brilliant!  Basically I was paid to see all of the Continent, bar Luxembourg, which was either closed or not on route, and back then I was privileged to go behind the Iron Curtain.  Whatever we may have felt about the Communist Regime, most regular folk were really friendly and helpful, and it was only the Authorities who spoilt it.  Mind you, is that anything different for us on our roads over here?

Last time I we met on this site we had been speaking much on the subject of motorways.  The fact is they’re the fastest, busiest of our fast flow systems, and yet they are upheld as being the safest.  However, the general standard of driving on those roads is actually very poor, as regrettably 99.9% of drivers, through no fault of their own, are untrained to use them.  This leads to all sorts of problems, as we’ve already seen.  However, for the most, anyone can get away with poor driving on these roads, but that is just so long as nothing disturbs the status quo.  Get an object in the carriageway, a broken down vehicle or some other event that will cause someone somewhere to wake up and do something sudden and then it all falls apart.  When that slight disruption occurs you will have vehicles running into each other all over the shop.  That starts a domino effect, because one shunt causes further disruption and that triggers more – causing further disruption and mayhem.

I don’t take the normal, perhaps stereotypical stance on driving that most do, i.e. one of blame.   The driver system in the UK has just evolved, inappropriately for sure and very slowly from the days of few decent roads, and even fewer cars that had almost no performance at all, up to today’s offerings, but training hasn’t kept pace. Compared to 50-years ago, all cars we buy now are high performance vehicles, as you can find very few that re not capable of achieving 100mph.  50-years ago there were very few that could achieve 100mph, and those that could where the high performance cars of the day.

In the big picture of driving, most who would look after our driving interests and training are largely untrained themselves, because you have to remember that ADI’s (L-plate instructors) are only trained down to baby driver level themselves, because that is their demographic and there is no incentive for them to do more. Most were only Test Pass drivers like the rest of us before embarking on a driving instructor career path, which is solely about teaching folk how to pass the dreaded Test.  One of life’s great Rites of Passage.

I’ve yet to drive with an ADI not trained to normal Ride Drive levels who can really drive well.  Overall there are few that can do it, as most fall desperately short on many counts.  Consequently, those who rise to head the authoritive driving organisations have no real underpinning in terms of knowledge or appreciation of real driving practice on real roads, in today’s cars and at today’s speeds and congestion.  Somehow, those words of the blind leading the blind come to mind.

It seems criminal to me that we don’t move on to further training and grades after the basic vehicle handling assessment, which is all that the standard driving test is.  In other words, moving on to the next level and learning how to drive on real roads at real speeds.  How to overtake, for instance, both stationary and moving vehicles and hazards.  Building up new habits of appropriate spacing in traffic, learning to raise our eyes to raise our game.  Joining, using and leaving fast flow systems, and so on.  Taking on greater levels of training just like we would in every other learning experience, perhaps at work, in a profession, a sport, hobby or pastime.  Anyway, we could write volumes on the topic, but we are hear to talk about what it is to go trucking in today’s roads environment, so I will get back to the point.

So, we’re still on the motorway!  You guessed, but bear with me as I have a couple of important tips for you regarding how to share this environment with trucks and which can help everyone.

To access part-1 of this series, >Click Here< now