HGV warning

[limax2]

Limax, I presume you drive a truck from your statements,  from what I gathered from asking some police friends, yes, someone has them;-) anyway....they say, "if you are going faster than the speed limiter you are actually freewheeling and therefor not in control of the vehicle and could be charged with such if you are involved in an incident and deemed to have caused it by not being in control of your vehicle"

My days of driving trucks are long gone, now enjoying the freedom of retirement  . I have for short spells driven trucks for a living but in the eighties i was heavily involved on the design and subsequent testing of speed limiters on HGV's. You are right to say it was an "EU directive" rather than a "Ruling", but from what I remember if we didn't have them fitted by a certain date we wouldn't be able to sell any more vehicles over 7.5 tonnes in the UK and possibly the rest of the EU. (Probably a few exceptions like fire trucks). The speed limiter only cut the engine power at the set speed, so on a down hill you could exceed the speed limit on the over-run as opposed to freewheeling. i.e. still in gear and in control but exceeding the speed limit. Of course you still had a foot brake or exhaust brake etc. to stay within the legal limit. I do miss the view you get from a truck and it still annoys me when I hear people moan about all the HGV's on the road, but don't stop to think how the super markets etc. get supplied.
Much nicer on an unrestricted motorbike of course, but not much use for shifting many tons of cargo  .