AIBU to expect lorry drivers to respect speed limits and distance?

Oh yes, I had the same experience on the M6 a couple of weeks ago. Heavy traffic so I couldn't get out of the way either. I was in the left lane and this HGV was right on top of me. It's terrifying. What are they thinking? I know most of us probably don't leave enough of a stopping distance but to drive so ridiculously close when you're in a vehicle like that? It's terrible driving.

Commercial drivers are under a lot of pressure to hit deadlines. Also to keep costs down. Their ideal drive is at a steady speed in one gear, without braking and at, or as close to the speed limit as possible.

If a lorry is heavily laden it uses a lot of fuel accelerating so they try not to slow down and speed up, rather to "encourage" the driver in the left lane to drive at the speed limit.

In some cases lorries are not allowed in the right hand lane so cannot overtake.

I'm not saying they are right, but that's often the motivation.

Then you get the idiots who drive with their phone in hand or a copy of the Sun spread across the steering wheel. They are truly scary.

This really winds me up. I’m not easily scared when driving, but I really hate a massive great lorry on my tail in the left lane when I’m at the speeding limit and there’s another lorry in the middle lane so there’s nowhere I can go. Also think it’s really dangerous generally when there’s 2 lorries in the left and middle lane neck and neck for miles when the middle lane one is trying to overtake by doing 1mph faster

I was tailgated by a truck the other day, was driving at 95 in a hundred zone and he was stuck to me the whole time. At one stage he flashed but I was going to be turning ahead so I put on my indicator and he backed off. When I turned right he flew on up the road. Scary

Can I add in tractor drivers who speed through our village, often with a trailer on the back. They really will kill sometime one day 😡
A friend of mine drove onto the motorway and ended up sideways on being pushed along by a lorry who didn’t see her. The police who attended told her to get a white car, which would be easier to see than the black one she was driving.
She was traumatised by the whole thing and can’t drive on the motorway anymore, and she hates being driven on there too.

Yanbu. We have a 50 limit dual carriageway nearby which is widely ignored by the lorries and it is scary.

After a lorry went into the back of my car last year on a 20 limit road when I had to brake to avoid a child cycling to school, I am very wary. It was entirely the lorry’s fault that he was far too close to me, he was probably driving at or below 20mph but he still stove on the whole of the back of my car - obviously written off.

We had the same on the M6 this week, going 50 through the roadwork, and a lorry was right on our tail. The limit was 50, we were doing 50, so why they felt the need to be right behind us I don’t know, had there been any sort of an incident we would have been killed.

Can also add to that having two different lorry drivers signal once and move into the lane we were in, and just expecting us to move…. Plus the general chaos of two lanes being used as one lorry tries to overtake the other, despite only going 1mph faster

You’re being thoroughly unreasonable
obviously

on a serious note, speeding lorries are one of the few things in life that genuinely truly piss me off. The drivers know they’d be fine in pretty much any crash whereas it would be certain death of any one else