High Sided Vehicle

Bdeners

Bdeners

Free Member
Joined
Jul 22, 2018
Posts
60
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38
Location
Glasgow
Funster No
55,079
MH
2014 Hobby 65 GE
Exp
Since May 2018
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Don’t know if this has been posted before. With the high winds yesterday and associated road closures to high sided vehicles it got me wondering if a motorhome is classed as high sided.
Found this on the traffic Scotland twitter feed.
Looks like anything over 2.9 metre high fall into this.
Apologies to all if you are already aware of this
 
My van is just a few cm less than 2.9m in height and yet I still wouldn't chance some of the bridges in the type of winds we had yesterday.
 
Depends how highly you prize your life,,BUSBY,,
 
Travelling back from Ludlow yesterday on the M6 and M55 was scary. The wind caught us side on a few times and we honestly thought we were going over at one point. We’re under 2.9m but it was a bit of a fight all the way back.

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Our van is under 2.9m high ...
 
I went over the Forth road bridge yesterday, in my car. All the signs on the approach said "M90 (S) Closed to High-Sided Vehicles Ahead" - and as I approached the bridge, on the hard shoulder was a Police car, 1 motorhome, and lots of trucks.

But - there was nothing to actually stop the high sided vehicles going onto the bridge. I was sat behind a German coach and 2 British trucks, both curtainsiders with curtains shut, who just drove across the bridge ahead of me - the Police car did nothing and as far as I could see they just carried on their journey after the bridge.

The overhead signs were confusing though - even when you were already on the bridge they were saying "closed ahead".
 
As it happens we are fractionally over 2.9m tall, but I wouldn't chance it in a van let alone a MH

A traffic policeman friend of mine would say, if you get across with no incident it is a 99% chance you will never hear a thing

have any kind of issue with the signs saying you shouldn't be there and its a 99% chance you will be in big trouble

then I dread to think how happy the insurance company would be when they found you were instructed not to cross

but these days there are so many cctv cameras on the motorways I think it is quite likely tickets could still be issued even if not stopped

but, it all depends on the lights being correctly set, how often do they 'forget' to reset them after the worst winds have passed
 
I came down the A1 tea time-ish today and came past a Hymer Swing near the Newark turn and now I know why it's call a Swing .............. cuz it was all over the road in the high winds.
 
anything over 140cm tall is classed as a high sided vehicle for bridges etc

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Don’t forget to take in to account the narrow wheelbase of some of our vans, when considering the effect of high winds.

All other factors being equal, a narrower wheelbase will blow over sooner than a wider one.
 
Kingham said:
Typo ?.... or am I missing the joke ?
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not a typo, I remember being stopped at the seven crossing and only cars under 1.4 meters were being allowed to cross with the high winds
 
TheBig1 said:
not a typo, I remember being stopped at the seven crossing and only cars under 1.4 meters were being allowed to cross with the high winds
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That’s a new one on me, the thought of anything much more than 4’6” tall being stopped, didn’t make sense !
 
Yep there's nothing physically to stop you driving over the forth bridge just cameras ...im not sure if you drive accross without incident whether they would pursue you with a ticket or not but certainly there's been a few incidents in the past with idiots ignoring the no high sided vehicle signs and ended up in difficulty ...this one in particular was pretty famous at the time ..guy got a big fright and later a very big fine



That said the new bridge was claimed to not suffer this same problem as it's a complete nightmare when it's closed as it's a very long detour via kincardine. They should have built a tunnel

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I have just come back in the house after a neighbour rang to ask if I knew one of my trailers was in the road. the wind last night blew a 150kg trailer off the drive. It would of got further if the cable and padlock tethering it to the motorhome towbar wasnt securing it

just under 80mph gusts here last night
 
The new crossing is much better in high winds than the original
Still wouldn't have liked to take the van over Wednesday
 
Northernraider said:
That said the new bridge was claimed to not suffer this same problem as it's a complete nightmare when it's closed as it's a very long detour via kincardine. They should have built a tunnel
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Kincardine was closed to high sided vehicles as well when I went over the Forth on Wednesday - at least according to the traffic bulletin I heard. Not a day to be a truck driver in Scotland!

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