UK HGV platooning trial

A very long time ago (October 2017) I wrote that the UK government had given the go-ahead for trials of vehicle platooning on UK roads. I wrote that these were "expected to happen later in 2018". Ah, I was younger and naïve then.

In reality the consortium led by TRL that won a £8.1m UK government contract to run the trial spent 2018 in the planning phase of the project. The second phase of the project is scheduled to begin in the spring of 2019 and last for four months. This will shake down the vehicles and technology, before the third phase of the project involving DHL drivers and DAF trucks, and lasting eight months. 280 journeys of around 100 miles each will be data logged, half of which will be HGVs in normal operation, and the other half will be three HGVs platooning. The final phase of the project, presumably running into 2020, will be the analysis and reporting to make an economic case for HGV platooning.

Surprisingly neither the UK government, via Highways England which is overseeing the project, nor TRL list the project on their websites. The report from the 2014 case study, also led by TRL, is available here. But to get an update on the HGV platooning trial you have to delve into the commercial haulage press to read about TRL's chief executive, Rob Wallis, delivering a project status update to a Transport Conference back in May 2018. The bits that I'm interested in, such as which V2V technologies they'll be using, are still a mystery. As a publicly funded project, I'd like to think it would be a bit more transparent than this.

What is available is the 2018 report on the public dialogue carried out by Kantar on behalf of the Department for Transport, which included the public's reaction to HGV platooning (on pages 35 and 36). Bizarrely there are statements in this report that imply that only the lead HGV in the platoon would have a driver in the cab. This is reinforced by the report's feedback on business reaction (on pages 66 and 67) where there is talk of "platoon hubs" at motorway junctions where drivers wait to take vehicles out of the platoon and onto local roads. If this is how platooning was portrayed, then no wonder the reaction was predominantly negative.