To think it wouldn't kill them to pull over once in a while?

[Featherbag]

We're driving through County Durham, it's a beautiful day and were heading to a lovely village for afternoon tea and ice cream for the toddler. We're on a National Speed Limit road, single lane, stuck behind a horse box doing 23mph. There are 8 cars in front of us also stuck behind it, and I can't see the back of the queue. It's been like this for almost half an hour - AIBU to think it would be polite of the horse box driver to pull the fuck over every now and then to let the queue pass?!

This thread is a week old tomorrow. We should have a party for it.

Nenny, that's far beyond the Highway Code, which talks about pulling over where possible, not about avoiding all journeys where not possible or only infrequently possible.

Shall I bake a cake?

Iced date and walnut do?

Ooh lovely. I'll bring the nibbles. We can pull into a layby and get the tartan rug out.

Not if I bring the horse we wont!

Oh no. I will check the route for a horse friendly pub.

Let's invite the horses who were (rightfully) booted out from FuckYou Field!

Doctrine, the Highway Code doesn't cover every eventuality, and indeed it would be very surprising if it had a separate section for horsebox drivers. There is however an overriding duty to drive considerately.

My post was prompted by the fact that we have had a number of posts on here from people explaining just how difficult it is to drive a horsebox by comparison with practically any other vehicle. The difficulties seem to be pretty unique to horseboxes because of the fragility of horses, and carrying horses in boxes is something that is mainly done for the purposes of people's hobbies or commercial interests; also, I suspect, a lot of the time said drivers are going along familiar routes if they are travelling to regular racecourses, showgrounds etc. They could therefore familiarise themselves reasonably easily with convenient laybys. So, all in all, it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect them to put themselves out fairly minimally to reduce inconvenience to other drivers, rather than to expect hundreds of other drivers to put themselves out on the horse owners' behalfs (behalves?).

I have never, ever been followed by hundreds of cars when towing my trailer.

If there are no lay-bys on a half hour journey between the field and the vet, or the field and the show, or the old owner and the new owner, should they not travel?

Most trucks and vans are on the road for commercial interests, surely?

Nennypops I am sure many horsebox drivers take steps to use the most appropriate roads for their journey. They are as likely though as other road users to come across traffic that slows them down. For example, if you come across cyclists on a windy country road, it can take ages to find an appropriate and safe place to pass them. You just wait, you don't expect them to move off the road, especially if there is no safe alternative, so you can go faster. Also many horses are kept in rural locations, serviced by rural roads, as are equine vet surgeries, competition grounds, riding schools, etc. so access to horses tends to be more focused on rural roads than larger roads.

If you look at the link for County Durham you will see there is a tiny number of laybys for trucks. This is fairly typical as they take up a lot of space and cost a lot to construct.

YANBU but most drivers of slow vehicles do their best.

As a tractor driver a long time ago it can be hard to pull over with a heavy long vehicle. Passing places for a car length are not that easy for a tractor and trailer to pull into. Soft verges and roadside ditches are impossible and potentially dangerous.

The other problem is pulling back out into fast moving traffic with a big, long or wide load is difficult. Tractors in particular have to start in low gears and pulling out at 5 mph with slow acceleration up to 25 mph in a 50 - 60 mph stream of traffic you need a bare minimum of 100 metres of clear road to pull out into otherwise oncoming vehicles have to brake heavily and could cause a pile up. Staying on the road is often safer.

A tractor on the A9 could easily build up quite a big queue on a stretch of busy A road even by stopping at each layby

If there are no lay-bys on a half hour journey between the field and the vet, or the field and the show, or the old owner and the new owner, should they not travel?

Obviously not. But then, on a half hour journey they're not going to cause the sort of inconvenience and problems that are being discussed here, are they? And in any event they can still be considerate in terms of keeping to the side of the road to make it easier for people to overtaken when it is possible.

Well why wouldn't they Nennypops? The horsebox in the OP was going at 23mph so in half an hour it covered 11.5 miles, it's not implausible that one would meet quite a few cars on a busy country road over 11.5 miles. The OP said the road was so busy with Saturday traffic that she was never able to overtake on the long, straight stretches with the laybys, so if there was that much traffic in one direction why wouldn't there be that much traffic in the one?

Rural roads rarely have 'a side' to which a 3 metre wide truck can keep to in order to allow others to pass more safely.

I said 30 mins because the OP said "it's been like this for nearly half an hour"

But the OP seems to have been held up for over half an hour. And the difference is that she was on a road with laybys, which is not the situation Doctrine was referring to.

The fact that you can't overtake doesn't of itself mean that the road is fantastically busy; it means that it may be busy in the opposite direction, but equally it may simply be the situation which I'm sure we've all encountered, where the traffic in the other lane is only intermittent but inevitably every time you might be able to overtake there is someone approaching. Equally we all know perfectly well why there may be more traffic going in one direction than the other - e.g. during the rush hour, at the end of the school day, towards mealtimes when people are coming away from shopping centres etc, when public events finish etc etc.

The fact is that horsebox drivers are choosing for their own purposes to drive vehicles which they know are capable of causing serious inconvenience to other road users. It's a real concern that there seems to be an assumption on the part of some at least that they need do no more than the bare minimum to ameliorate that.

I know that OP was on a road with lay-bys, I'm just saying that's why I pulled 30 mins out of the air!

And as I said, trucks and tractors are also on the road "for their own purposes"

I just don't believe that, for many journeys such a vehicle would undertake, research would throw up lots of reasonable alternate routes, some of which had lay-bys. And there's an argument that the most direct route means the box is on the road for the shortest time and therefore inconveniences the fewest people,

Or maybe a longer route, but one with typically fewer cars

Or maybe one with shallower hills, so the people behind aren't so slowed down by the crawling up the hills part

Nennypops no one has denied that horsebox drivers or any other road user should try not to inconvenience others, the question is whether the inconvenience was avoidable in this case. In this particular situation it all depends on the availability of laybys but until the OP tells us the road there isn't much further that can be said about it.

The OP also chose to get in her vehicle to drive through the countryside to get ice cream - hardly a necessary journey, even though it added to the traffic of country roads. We all use the roads for a variety of purposes, there is no merit system before which you have to justify your journey before you embark on it, whether you want to drive 11.5 plus miles for ice cream or to take your horse out.

Finally the OP was not held up for over half an hour, she was forced to go slower than she would have for less than half an hour. So had she been averaging speeds of 50 mph (optimistic since the road was windy), her journey overall was about 15 minutes longer than it would have otherwise been.

Can you tell me why we can use the roads Nenny

Oh my god is this argument still going? It wasn't a hugely debatable point to start with!

I think we are near to sorting it all out Ilove. I have an HGV lesson booked for next week and a horsebox on order.

You speak with forked tongues madam.