Gah, road gritters out in force tonight...

[Tofufi]

Just done 90 miles in a non dubfreeze related dash up north for the next few weeks - the car (42 year old beetle ) behaved perfectly, but they were gritting the roads really heavily for some unfathomable reason.

Really quite annoyed, had to undertake one of the grit spreaders at one point, got completely covered in the ***** they throw around.

Just spent the last 30 minutes carting buckets of water from my 3rd floor flat to wash the bug with - tried as hard as I could to do all the underneath, but that's tricky with a slammed bug and a scissor jack!

Does anyone here actually support the use of gritters, or is it just me who hates em?

Hope everyone else has had a good weekend anyway, other than moaning about grit spreading I've tidied my garage and fitted the remaining windows to my bay

 

[dancingbay]

they attacked me on the way home too, tried to get up the pavement to avoid them, but didn't quite make it.

 

[Tofufi]

I got a few strange looks washing the car at 9pm in the freezing cold and dark in a large car park though :lol:

 

[Saraj]

I got caught at the M4/M5 interchange just as I was coming off the motorway it pulled out infront of me.

I slowed right down and stayed well back, much to the annoyance of everyone behind me. Thankfully it went the other way at the roundabout so I only did a couple of hundred meters behind it.

 

[vwaddict]

i got stuck behind one on the m6 on my way back from dubfreeze it was like a hail of bullets hitting the front of my t4 havent checked for chips yet as it was dark but i cringed like hell passing it

 

[scott wilson]

all hail the gritters.......even though salt equals rust i favour my life. At 4am sunday morning in cornwall i was sliding up the village roads on a quest to dubfreze and nearly lost my ass and not to mention my trailer and its load on an ungritted country road. If i`d have lost it i could have kissed goodbye to £14k and when i hit gritted roads everything was good...isn`t that why we pay council tax..i`ll be onto them in the morning to find out why that 2 mile stretch wasn`t gritted

 

[jenna_uk22]

gotta agree with Scott, they stopped gritting about 2 miles radius of where i live last winter, declassified our road for some reason, skidded across the road and nearly hit a car last year and nearly lost it the other week aswel.

 

[Tofufi]

I gotta say I'm utterly against them

Not only do they make our cars rust so much faster, but I can taste the salt when I cycle to work the next day or two.

I'd prefer to see the tax money spent on better training for drivers to be able to cope with the occasional patches of ice. Not to mention drivers driving carefully as they would expect occasional slippery bits.

Do either of you two above have winter tyres fitted?

 

[scott wilson]

no winter tyres...hadn`t thought of that. Would they have stopped me sliding all over the place? If so i`m gonna get me some for winter times

 

[vwaddict]

not keen on the gritters but unlike norway sweden etc we dont get enough bad weather to justify changing tyres for winter and summer so we will just have to live with the gritters dont think training drivers would help you would still get muppets who think theyre invinsible its simple if its frosty slow down

 

[Silver Camper]

I got well and truly sandblasted by the gritting wagon on the way back from Dubfreeze.......but luckily was driving the 'old mans' car and not my van.... :lol:

 

[dp]

If we didn't have gritters, we would all learn to slow down and take more care when it's icy / frosty out. It's the fact that they've been gritting for years that's resulted in Brits expecting to be able to drive the same regardless of the road conditions. It's not just a summer / winter tyre thing abroad, it's also that they generally know how to drive in the conditions better which is partly because they don't have gritters!

I say get rid of them.