I was coming home from a rally yesterday and I thought I would see how much fuel might be saved by going at 50 instead of 60 - it was around 20-25%, but that is not the story although very significant.
So there I am towing my stabilised TA at 50mph in the inside lane on a three lane motorway.
Suddenly I become aware of three cars to my right in a row across the other two lanes all doing different speeds, the nearest one is just about to hit me, so instinctively I swerve to the left.
It will not be a surprise to you that I had what I would call a tank slapper (biker) rather than a swerve, I believe the wheels of the van came up on one side and the outfit was using the hard shoulder and the inside lane and the car was definitely being driven by the van, I really did think we were goners.
However after what seemed like ages but was probably no more than a couple of seconds the stabiliser seemed to do its work and the outfit miraculously straightened out (thankyou Winterhoff).
The driver did drop back to check we were alright and I do not in retrospect believe he was the original cause of the situation, probably a speeding motorist had someone pull out in front of him or something similar and ran out of road, however my kids did hear some rather blue language aimed at him.
I would describe it as the most frightening moment of my life and can be pretty sure that if the same thing would have happened at 60mph today would be a very different day.
The situation was not of my making and could happen to any of us, the car could have hit me anyway.
I will be happy to continue saving fuel for the foreseeable future though!
So there I am towing my stabilised TA at 50mph in the inside lane on a three lane motorway.
Suddenly I become aware of three cars to my right in a row across the other two lanes all doing different speeds, the nearest one is just about to hit me, so instinctively I swerve to the left.
It will not be a surprise to you that I had what I would call a tank slapper (biker) rather than a swerve, I believe the wheels of the van came up on one side and the outfit was using the hard shoulder and the inside lane and the car was definitely being driven by the van, I really did think we were goners.
However after what seemed like ages but was probably no more than a couple of seconds the stabiliser seemed to do its work and the outfit miraculously straightened out (thankyou Winterhoff).
The driver did drop back to check we were alright and I do not in retrospect believe he was the original cause of the situation, probably a speeding motorist had someone pull out in front of him or something similar and ran out of road, however my kids did hear some rather blue language aimed at him.
I would describe it as the most frightening moment of my life and can be pretty sure that if the same thing would have happened at 60mph today would be a very different day.
The situation was not of my making and could happen to any of us, the car could have hit me anyway.
I will be happy to continue saving fuel for the foreseeable future though!
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