Thread: Interesting, Odd or Funny Pics II.

Originally Posted by JDNSW

Yes - reinforced by an experience last time I was in town - with a difference. I was in the left of two lanes approaching a roundabout. He overtook me about 10km faster than my speed and proceeded to use both lanes to enter the roundabout. Heavy braking allowed me to just avoid getting sideswiped by his trailer.

That's not how I was taught to do it......

As a truck driver who has won the legal and physical battle, in the lhs truck v rhs car scenario, on half a dozen occasions, I can only reiterate the bleeding obvious, ONCE THE PRIME MOVER HAS STARTED TO MAKE THE TURN, THE DRIVER CANNOT SEE THE LEFT LANE. This is not the best time to exercise the moronic, gotta be in front of the truck, attitude.
I usually/whenever possible straddle lane one and two, to prevent any cars getting between my truck and the kerb. Often at the latest opportunity the truck needs to swing right to avoid the trailer wheels mounting the footpath, this is when the idiots decide to try their Dicky Johnson impression.
The last incident was satisfaction on so many levels. Picture the scene, a quiet two lane road, merging into a single lane, in PREPARATION to enter a single lane roundabout. The only two moving vehicles, in sight, were my single trailer truck and a very new Jeep (satisfaction point 1).
In preparation for the roundabout I checked my mirror, no other traffic visible, so I changed lanes. As I approached the merge I checked my left mirror, as expected, no traffic. Next I feel/hear a slight bump, still I couldn't see anything until the almost stationary Jeep is behind me.
It turns out the Jeep was so close behind me, before I changed lanes, that it was not visible in either mirror.
Said Jeep then tries to overtake me before the roundabout. When it ran out of (bitumen) lane the driver tried to bluff me into giving way. That may have worked, had I known it was there.
Upon stopping to exchange details considerable damage was notedon the Jeep, but I couldn't determine what part of the truck made contact.
The young female driver admitted that the drive wheels contacted, but it was my fault as she was travelling faster than me.
Not wanting to engage in an argument in which neither party was prepared to concede or going to win, I gave her my details and obtained hers.
Half an hour later I contacted the truck owner to inform him of the incident. He had already heard the other side of the story. The version he got was that they had looked at the company website and determined that it was a big company that could afford to pay for the damages. Further, that they should pay for the damage as I had failed to make allowances for the fact that the other driver had only held her licence for under a week. There were no P plates on the car. It turned out, the driver was driving a hire car, rented in her mother's name, that she was refused insurance, due to her age.
The contact was entirely avoidable by the Jeep driver. She turned into the truck, believing she could bluff her way into the lane (satisfaction point 2), typical overconfident P plater.
Upon foolishly putting herself in that position, she had multiple ways of avoiding the collision. She could have slowed until the truck was clear (satisfaction point 3). She could have stopped, allowing the truck to pass (satisfaction point 4). She could have maintained her trajectory, there was no kerb, only grassy gravel offering an escape route (satisfaction point 5).
Even after telling me what part of the truck came into contact with the car, three experienced truck drivers could find no evidence of contact satisfaction point 6).
The arrogance and incompetence was compounded by the sense of entitlement inherited from her mother, who was adamant that the company should pay the many thousands of dollars damage, to cover her sanctioning the illegal activity of her daughter.
The owner of the truck informed the hire company of the incident to prevent any comeback such as a claim that the truck hit the car and drove off. It also prevented the renter from untruthfully claiming she was (directly) responsible for the damage (satisfaction point 7).

People do like to try it on if they think you have money to pay their spurious claims. My brother was a restaurant manager in a nice part of town and when people would make weird claims about food poisoning, the owner would make up a funny story about how they didn't actually make the lasagne or whatever, but bought it from Woolies and reheated it. Once people thought that they would have to fight a large company with an army of lawyers they soon gave up.

Ball cleaner.jpg

Being resuced from deep mud...

No health and safety//

In 1983 to 1984 I transversed africe down the west coast across Zaire and down to south africa and back up the east coast to Egypt and back to the UK.
One of the hardest parts was crossing west to east through what was Zaire(now republic of congo)
took 6 weeks because of the very bad roads and we were in the"dry Season.. sometimes we were stuck for a day or two behind "commerical trucks" on the same route.. averaged 2km a day for over 3 weeks..
I only had a few photos of those roads, I attach one photo and a more modern video (from X) which shows the the trucks on the same "roads in the "wet Season"
we had no winches, snatch straps etc just a shovel ot two axes etc to help us... Cape York is easy in comparison...
Link to Trucks: https://x.com/gunsnrosesgirl3/status...70478077886810

picture of us
zaire-crop.JPG

There's nothing hard about Cape York unless you want it to be. Last time I went to the top, I didn't even engage four wheel drive. There was another trip, only half way up, that the 31 kilometres into Laura took me three hours, mainly to prevent damage on the unpredictable surface.

True enough I was comparing it to off tourist tracks like an east to west journey ..not the tourist route up the middle of peninsula...