Re: On Topic? Cars, anyway: 55 MPH speed limit...

"Mortimer" <me@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> kirjoitti 
viestissä:MLOdnXLWqIaCohXVnZ2dnUVZ8tSdnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> As a matter of interest, in the USA are large articulated trucks 
> (heavy goods vehicles - HGVs - in UK parlance) legally restricted to a 
> lower limit than other vehicles? In the UK they are mechanically 
> restricted to 56 mph (ie 80 km/hr) which can lead to the dreaded 
> "lorry leapfrog" as truck 1 doing 56 comes up behind truck 2 doing 55 
> (due to tolerances in the settings of the speed limiters) and decides 
> to overtake it at a differential speed of 1 mph. Consequently all the 
> traffic behind it in Lane 2 is suddenly reduced to 56 for the several 
> miles that it takes for truck 1 to complete its manoevre. Lo and 
> behold, a few miles further on they'll come to a hill and truck 2 
> (which happens to have a more powerful engine and therefore isn't 
> slowed as much by the gradient) will overtake truck 1, taking forever 
> and a day - and so it goes on. In a car, you might tem****arily exceed 
> the speed limit to make sure you got past quickly, but HGVs don't have 
> that option.

Trucks have speed limiters also in Finland (probably in whole EU) --  
though the limiters here are set AFAIK to 88 km/h.

I've been always wondering why truck drivers all the time MUST get to 
drive as fast as the limiter allows. Would it really destroy their 
schedules if they would decide to just happily stay behind if the 
vehicle in front doesn't drive over 5 km/h slower than would be that 
truck's maximum?

....Hmm. Or are they actually doing so, and it just looks to an average 
driver that a truck overtakes another one so slowly that the difference 
must be minimal?

P.V.