Lorries

I don't like laws. Laws are often bollocks. They are made by man, born of woman, to control other men, born of women. They have no right to do that. But sometimes laws are a good thing. If there aren't too many of them, and they're sensible. And all they do is to guide people to do what is sensible, when those people are too fucking thick to work out that for themselves.

I've recently been travelling sur le continong, and various countries have different laws concerning their traffic. Some of them are a bit daft, to my mind. Like in Germany, they have this thing where, if you're in a built-up area, you have to slow down for every fucking junction and give way to cars pulling out in front of you on your right (which is, obviously, the side they drive on, or it would be even more silly). But if there's a yellow diamond, you don't. I know why they do this, it's to keep the traffic slow, and to make jobs for people who make and install yellow diamonds.

The Spanish have what I think is a brilliant idea, which is a traffic light on approach to a small town or village on a mainish road. If you approach it too fast, it goes red. You have to stop. It holds you up for a minute. Therefore, you don't speed through the village and kill their kids. And if you do go too fast, you hold up all the traffic behind you, and they all hoot at you and make "wanker" signs, and you feel a fool, and you don't do it again.

Here is a thing I would like to see become a law, and also the reasons why.

Lorries. I work in a place which is pretty full of lorry drivers most of the time. Salt of the earth. Also thick as planks, for the most part. Lorries are restricted by law to 56mph (which is near enough 90km/h so it isn't as daft as it seems). Some are governed so they CAN'T do more than that. But the governors aren't that accurate, so you'll get one doing 55, one doing 57, etc.

When one of these overtakes another, it can take a long time. Don't correct my maths here, because i know that it's inaccurate, and I know why, but it isn't significant enough to matter. When a lorry doing 57 mph overtakes one doing 55 mph, the difference is 2 mph. 2 mph is near enough 3 feet per second. A lorry is usually in the order of 30-something feet long, so for the faster one to pass the slower one takes approximately 90 seconds.

While this lorry is overtaking the other lorry, he is pissing off people like me, wasting fuel, causing accidents and generally behaving like a prick.

Now. If the lorry was doing 55 mph, and he was going 100 miles, he would take 109 minutes. If he managed to get up to 57 mph ALL of the journey (which would mean hogging the outside lane for EVER), he would take 105 minutes. A saving of just four minutes. My transport department tell me that he would use, on one of their tankers, roughly 5% more fuel too.

When he gets to his destination, he normally waits at a gate of some sort for some paperwork, so he can load or unload.

So, folks. Next time you see a lorry driver, tell him this, eh?

Or, perhaps, a law prohibiting these selfish, thick bastards from using any lane apart from the slow one, except to overtake tractors, would be a GOOD law?

What do people think? Especially lorry drivers?