driving test and brakes 552

The 40-50ft is what I see pretty much most of the time 2500 miles a week.

DING! Easiest way to judge it is to remember that an artic trailer is 40 or 45ft long and the whole length of an artic is roughly about 53ft. Try and picture what'd fit in the gap. Also, don't try it with the lorries on your side of the road as your perception is skewed because of the near proximity. Instead look at the gaps of those on the other carriageway. You'll see that the majority of them leave a decent sized gap and many of those that don't tend to be closing to overtake.

Don't. For 99.9% of the time, that's not what they're doing. When they get 10ft away, then yes they are. A point I'd like to make though is that they're limited to 56MPH so if there's nothing stopping you going faster such as a car in front, then you're going too slowly. Remember that pretty much all car speedos are inaccurate up to 10% so when your speedo says it's doing 60, you could actually be only doing 54. My mates Vectra is only doing 72 when his speedo shows 80. Lorry speedos are accurate to within 2.5% and are actually tested for accuracy every 2 years. Most I've driven are no more than 1MPH out at 56MPH.

I'm not going to say that some don't because they do. Tipper drivers are exceptionally likely to as are Irish lads with fridge trailers on.

When you're driving down the road, you leave a gap that whilst not being a 2 second gap, feels safe and you know you've enough time to react. We all do. Lets pull a figure out of the air and say 25ft. Which is about 2 car lengths and what I'd say is the average on a fairly busy UK motorway. A lorry driving that same distance from you will look quite close in your rearview mirror because of it's size - when I'm sat in my lorry, my eyes are at the same level as the bottom of the windows of the top deck of a double deck bus. Yet they're doing nothing different than you deem perfectly acceptable.

From my own personal point of view, I cannot drive my lorry 10ft from the vehicle in front, whether it be a car or lorry because it doesn't feel safe. I WILL close up to that prior to an overtake of a lorry in L1 but I won't drive that close for any significant length of time.

Also, once you get as close as about 6-8ft, it becomes virtually impossible to see the rear lights of a car in front so you'd not know whether they had braked or not.

-- Conor

Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........