The good side of videoing...

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BentMikey

Rider of Seolferwulf
Location
South London
Much more boring footage, but it's even more worth letting the companies know about their excellent drivers. More likely that the good karma stories and the gratitude will be shared around by the drivers too. I think the carrot is probably better than the stick, but both are required. Just imagine how different driving and cycling would be if half of all road users took the effort to report one instance of either good or bad company driving on every road trip.


View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBwhOTK5AHA


Of course I wrote the company and mentioned how good their driver was. Didn't get a reply in this case though.

Also a Westway Coaches driver, no video, but got this response to my thank you email:
Hi Mike

Thank you very much for your e-mail. In this day and age it is quite refreshing to receive an e-mail in which someone shows their appreciation, especially when that person was not even a customer of ours and would have had to look us up to source our contact details.

I will be sure to pass on your comments to the driver concerned and his colleagues.

Kind regards
 

jonredhornet

Active Member
What an excellent idea, I hadn't considered this. I've been impressed with many overtakes and other peoples driving around me in the past ... if I have the opportunity in the future I think I may do this. ;)
 
Location
Shropshire
That’s a great bit of driving, speaking as a HGV driver I always try my best and think in my case I would really appreciate the positive comments it would encourage me to carry on trying my best. Although I would agree that there are some idiot HGV drivers around and those who are driving under pressure to deliver too many goods in too short a time (never fell for that one I, the job take as long as it takes!) I do think we get overall a bad press on cycle chat, as you say the the positives should be rewarded as well as the bad driving complained about.
 
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BentMikey

Rider of Seolferwulf
Location
South London
I also make a fair amount of effort to make life easy for the bus drivers on my commute, letting them out and giving them plenty of space to manouvre when I think they need it. I saw Magnatom mention my taking chocolates and a thank you letter to various bus driver depots on the D4N topic too. On my commute, they deserve it too.

The bonus with riding such an unusual bike is that most of the drivers now recognise me and are even better around me than other cyclists, and they're pretty good with those.
 
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BentMikey

Rider of Seolferwulf
Location
South London
Brad, yup, most HGV and bus drivers are really excellent. That reminds me, I have a capture of a Metronet van driver rego from Sunday that I see regularly on my commute, I'd better send them a letter.
 

thomas

the tank engine
Location
Woking/Norwich
BADGER.BRAD said:
Although I would agree that there are some idiot HGV drivers around and those who are driving under pressure to deliver too many goods in too short a time (never fell for that one I, the job take as long as it takes!)

I've had some bad HGV overtakes and fussed on here, but had some really good ones too. I emailed TNT a few weeks back about how good one of their drivers was, but they never got back to me :biggrin:.

Had a really nice driver this morning, didn't even bother me. Waited a good 10-20 meters back - he obviously knew he wouldn't get past so didn't even bother trying (you'd be very lucky to find a gap in traffic big enough for a lorry on this road). Unfortuantley my camera created a corrupt video file so I can't see the company/just post some good driving online for a change.
 

Adrian_K

Über Member
Location
Sunny Surbiton
I had a very nice HGV who overtook me 3 times in about 2 miles due to traffic, everytime he waited until safe (it was a busy fast road) , gave loads of room nailed it (as best as a 38 tonne truck can) and went by - no fuss.

So I called the company (Ronnie Wood - easily memorable) and said thanks and he was 'oh, umm, thanks, err, thanks very much'. I don't think anyone had ever commented positively on their driving before.
 
It is a good idea,agreed.With some of the rubbish driving I think sometimes we can miss some of the good courteous well thought out driving.
 

cannondale boy

Über Member
Its something different out of the book, and its quite refreshing to see someone actually commenting about good driving and giving credit to who was at the wheel.

Sending a letter and telling them how good there driving was on the day will not only give that person a good feeling of being a good driver, but hopefully it will let other HGV drivers know the importance of being a patient, courteous driver. This is a prime e.g and hopefully others follow suit.
 

Velorum

New Member
cannondale boy said:
Sending a letter and telling them how good there driving was on the day will not only give that person a good feeling of being a good driver, but hopefully it will let other HGV drivers know the importance of being a patient, courteous driver. This is a prime e.g and hopefully others follow suit.

Quite right.

Excellent work.

:eek:
 

jonny jeez

Legendary Member
I think BM is onto an excellent idea here. Can we start some kind of cycle chat campain...or even company leaders board...Maybe companies could even publish their position on the board with pride to all potential client's. (ie, we have had 5 golden driver awards this month from the guys at cycle chat, the best and most respected cycle community in Britian)

Being sure to only include good drivers not bad.

If we got really organised, we could have a little regional collection to present some kind of trophy/reward to the best company over a given period.

This could work wonders for driver awarness and driver/cyclist relations

I am serious by the way...perhaps Boris could help
 
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