Wet Night Behind a Loaded Lorry on the Coastal Motorway
At 21:40 you are driving a 2016 saloon south on the coastal motorway towards Beirut. It has rained for an hour; the surface is wet with standing water in the wheel tracks, and spray from heavy vehicles cuts visibility to about 60 m. The posted limit is 80 km/h and you are in the right-hand lane doing exactly 80 km/h. You started work at 07:00 and have already driven 90 minutes. Ahead is an articulated lorry loaded with steel rebar. One of its two rear lamps is out and its reflectors are caked with mud. You are following at about 25 m - roughly one second - because the left lane is a continuous stream of faster cars and you do not want to lose your place in the queue. The lorry's tyres throw up a wall of water. Your own front tyres are down to 2.5 mm of tread and your wipers are on full speed.
1. Work out the gap you should be keeping at 80 km/h in this weather, and state what you would actually change in the next few hundred metres.
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Convert first, then apply the rule. 80 km/h is 22.2 m per second. The dry-weather two-second rule gives 44 m; in heavy rain and spray the rule is doubled to about four seconds, i.e. roughly 89 m - not 25 m.
But the gap is not the binding constraint here - visibility is. You must be able to stop within the distance you can see. At 80 km/h on a wet road, reaction plus braking needs roughly 70–90 m. You can see 60 m. That means you are already overdriving your sight line, whatever gap you leave.
So the correct response is to reduce speed, not just drop back. Easing to about 50–55 km/h brings wet stopping distance into the 35–45 m band, which fits inside 60 m of visibility. Then rebuild the gap to at least four seconds at that lower speed (about 60 m).
Practical actions: lift off and let the lorry pull away; stay out of the spray rather than tucked in behind it; dipped headlights, not main beam, because main beam reflects off the spray; keep the demister on. If the spray stays blinding after you drop back, leave at the next exit or stop for a coffee - you have been awake since 07:00. 'Losing your place' costs you seconds; a 25 m gap in these conditions costs far more.
2. The left lane clears for about 200 m. Do you overtake the lorry?
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No. Work through what the overtake actually requires rather than what the gap in the next lane looks like:
- You cannot see the road ahead of the lorry. Visibility is 60 m, and the lorry itself blocks the view. A lorry that brakes or swerves gives you no planning distance at all.
- Time alongside is time blind. To pass a vehicle doing 80 km/h you need a speed differential of maybe 15–20 km/h, which means 20–30 seconds of hard acceleration and something like 150 m of road - most of it spent in the spray being thrown off its tyres.
- The lorry's lighting is defective. One tail lamp out and dirty reflectors mean other drivers may not register it either; you do not want to be the car alongside when someone else misjudges it.
- Your own margin is thin. 2.5 mm of tread on standing water means aquaplaning risk and long wet stopping distances, and you are tired - reaction time is the first thing fatigue takes.
- Clear left lane is not clear road. 200 m of empty lane beside the lorry tells you nothing about what is 200 m ahead of it.
Overtake only when you can see the whole manoeuvre, complete it comfortably inside the clear stretch, and still have a margin for the other vehicle speeding up. None of that is true here. Fall back, stay patient, and take the opportunity at a genuinely open, dry stretch.
3. The lorry's brake lights come on hard and the trailer steps sideways. What do you do in the next two seconds?
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Brake progressively and stay in your lane - do not swerve.
- Squeeze, do not stamp. Apply firm, increasing pressure. If the wheels lock or you feel the steering go light and the wheel go vague, you are aquaplaning: release both brake and accelerator smoothly, hold the wheel straight and do not steer until grip returns, then brake again.
- Do not swerve left. The left lane is the fast lane with traffic in it; a loaded rebar trailer that is moving sideways will not be avoided by a lane change in 60 m of visibility, and a swerve at these speeds on wet asphalt is how you join the crash.
- Assume the load shifts. Rebar is unsecured or poorly secured - that is why the trailer stepped out. Stop well short and expect steel to spill across the carriageway.
- Warn the traffic behind with hazard lights once you have slowed, because the cars behind have the same 60 m visibility you do.
- After you stop: hazard lights on, keep everyone in the car with belts on until you know the traffic behind has stopped, and call 112 (Internal Security Forces). Do not walk up to a loaded trailer and do not try to help unload. If the road is blocked, get out only on the side away from traffic and stand uphill of the scene, not downhill.