By exercising some courtesy in terms of where we park our caravans in rest areas, there can be room for everyone.
“ Our view is that generally a lot of vanners pull up late in the evening, look around and think,‘ Gee, look at all this room,’ and spread themselves out,” he said.“ But at about midnight, 10 or 15 B- doubles are going to come in to have their required seven-hour break. But if caravanners have spread their vehicles out, making it tight for trucks to get in and out of the rest area, or it gets to the point where the truck driver has no choice but to drive on, he could be liable for a huge fine.”
More to the point, as Rod says,“ We don’ t want tired truck drivers on our roads. We don’ t want tired caravanners on the road either. We are more than happy to share rest areas with you.”
But if you’ re towing a van, and you plan to use a rest area designed for both cars and trucks, the right thing to do is to park in such a way that won’ t interfere with a truck’ s ingress and egress, making sure to leave plenty of room for them to pull up for the night too. This might mean parking on the gravel verge, or perhaps backing into a slight clearing. It’ s much easier for a caravanner to pull off such manoeuvres than for a truck driver at the wheel of a B-double.
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