I drove an 18 wheel Artic to London

[Sam Vimes]

Yesterday I had to deliver a load of toys to London. So I hopped into an 18 wheel Artic and headed off down the A10.

Several fines for offences later and a huge repair bill for going off road I made it.

Of course all of this took place on the kitchen table where my 9 year old grandson and I had our laptops and were running Euro Truck Simulator 2.

The demo is free and it's remarkably realistic. The paid for version is only £4.22 and you can get different maps for around the world.

What prompted me to post this was that at some point I had to reverse the beast and it confirmed what I knew about reversing my caravan..... I'm rubbish at it.

Good fun if you have the time and incentive.

 

[Mr Plodd]

Having driven, and reversed both, an arctic is a lot easier to reverse than a caravan, and a caravan is much easier than one of those tiny unbraked "gardening" trailers.
It sounds counter-intuitive, but the bigger the trailer the slower they react to steering inputs. The length however is another matter, reversing cameras really help on that score!
I might have to give that simulator a try. Years ago I had a rally simulator, it was brilliant
You could alter the cars set up and doing so really did alter how the car petformed. I spent hours playing it, it even had an interactive steering wheel that rattled and shook on the loose stuff and went really light when the car was airborne, Ah, memories!

 

[Buckman]

Having driven, and reversed both, an arctic is a lot easier to reverse than a caravan, and a caravan is much easier than one of those tiny unbraked "gardening" trailers.
It sounds counter-intuitive, but the bigger the trailer the slower they react to steering inputs. The length however is another matter, reversing cameras really help on that score!
I might have to give that simulator a try. Years ago I had a rally simulator, it was brilliant
You could alter the cars set up and doing so really did alter how the car petformed. I spent hours playing it, it even had an interactive steering wheel that rattled and shook on the loose stuff and went really light when the car was airborne, Ah, memories!

Is it "law" that when reversing an artic with a trailer a banksman is required?

 

[Mr Plodd]

Not law, but highly advisable as the rear end is a loooong way away and the "outside" corner is often "invisible" when reversing on any sort of lock.

To my mind reversing cameras should be a compulsory fit on all artics, but there would be a big issue with compatability between cameras and monitors due to the variety of tractor unit and trailer combinations. Tractor unit having monitor system "A" and the trailer having camera system "B"
PAL and NTTSC etc!

 

[Steve1962]

This guy knows what he’s doing

View: https://youtu.be/IQUy3lJ7404?si=79UjeU-7-zoatBCU