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Bin men are rushing to complete their routes in order to get home early – leading to “unsafe working practices”
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CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » General Edinburgh
Ever had a problem with bin lorries?
(52 posts)-
Posted 7 years ago #
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Oh yes. Bin lorries are high on my list of "vehicles likely to be driven in a way that makes me concerned for my safety".
(I'm sure there's the usual confirmation bias going on, such that most of my interactions are fine (apart from the smell) but I have had a couple of bad experiences.)
Posted 7 years ago # -
Yes, very unsafe.
They reverse to make 3-point turns far too fast. And charging in and out of side roads seems common.
Personally, I don't think they should be allowed to go backward without a banksman (and there's always 2 on board the lorry).
Posted 7 years ago # -
I was surprised to spot a bin lorry reversing around a corner slowly with the aid of a banksman just last week.
Posted 7 years ago # -
I haven't forgotten the time when I was at Primary School and a boy in the year below was tragically killed by a reversing lorry (not a bin lorry)
Posted 7 years ago # -
They sometimes do some eepy reversing round my street with a banksman, albeit one who is sometimes not looking as they're fifty feet away stamping on any blue boxes which escaped being destroyed after being flung to the ground.
Posted 7 years ago # -
If I was paid to complete a route, rather than work an 8 hour shift, I'd probably try and complete it in 6 hours and go home too.
Binmen are humans too, and it's not a pleasant job. If the council wants to pay them by the route completed, then this sort of scenario is inevitable. Do people expect they'll just spend another 2 hours hanging around with bins and rubbish?
There's always at least 2 sides to a problem. It's convenient to blame "lazy binmen", but every time I see an over-full communal bin, it seems rammed full of recyclables and over-large items being dumped (e.g. broken [or complete!] items of furniture, large cardboard packaging boxes that haven't been broken down). Usually when a bin is full on the street side, if you approach it from the road side hatch it appears half empty! The rubbish piles up on the side which most people put it in from. Too many people are far too lazy and can't be bothered either try the other side or find another bin. So they just pile it in the top or leave the bag lying alongside. That's not the fault of the binmen. These bags then get burst and the contents end up half way down the road. A little bit more time sorting rubbish and care taken disposing of it would be a good contribution to easing the situation.
</rant> None of the above is an excuse for lazy or over-hasty bin lorry driving practices.
Point of note about banksmen - some of the commercial bin lorries are driver-only operation, i.e. the ones that serve take-aways, small shops etc. It's a full size lorry, driver pulls up, gets out of vehicle, empties sacks or wheely bin in the rear then drives off. The routes are less linear than domestic pick ups so quite often will U-turn or 3-point after a pickup to go off to the next one.
Posted 7 years ago # -
It's a very unpleasant job and someones got to do it so I'm very appreciative of the work they do. Mind you the only time I've been called an effing c*** whilst cycling was by a bin lorry driver who was in a hurry and thought I was in his way.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Are reversing cameras on lorries a common thing now? I can think of a way of finding out but...
Posted 7 years ago # -
At least being called an F ing ..C…. means have been noticed so could be re assuring
Posted 7 years ago # -
What happens in continental Europe? Do bin lorries have bankspeople because they're dangerous (and have other road users trying to squeeze by them because IMPORTANT RUSH and THEY WOULDN'T LET IT BE POSSIBLE IF NOT SAFE STANDS TO REASON) or do bin lorries not have bankspeople because other road users can be trusted to stay out of the way? I once witnessed some large-scale road-excavation and cobble-relaying in Ghent without the use of plastic barriers or Heras fencing because it was expected that people wouldn't deliberately try to walk face-first into the swinging scoop of an excavator or jump into a deep hole.
Posted 7 years ago # -
I'd echo kaputnik's comments. Considering what the bin men have to put up with round my way*, they do a great job. Must say though I am very wary around bin lorries as a cyclist and pedestrian. McDonald Road and Broughton Road particularly bad for bin lorries going to/from Powderhall depot.
* - fly tipping of furniture, mattresses and other items, ridiculously overfull communal bins, bags left in street and then torn apart by seagulls and foxes, folk using communal bins to dump construction waste, etc.
Posted 7 years ago # -
"over-full communal bin, it seems rammed full of recyclables"
Yes, from my unscientific observations this seems to be true around our way too. It annoys me because we recycle as much as possible.
Having said that, I don't think these manky black communal bins are the answer. Where I go skiing in france they have those buried bins (like the Grassmarket) where the top is removed and the contents lifted out by mini crane. They seem to hold a lot more and certainly the spillage / smell issue is lessened.
Back on topic, bin lorries scare the bejesus out of me, the sound of them roaring up behind me on slateford road of a morning is chilling.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Communal bins down my way are often full because nearby commercial premises dump their waste in them when their privately-collected bins are full.
I've snapped photos of their readily-identifiable waste in our on-street bin and they've had visits from the council. They then wait a couple of months before doing it again and we go through the whole reporting / council visit cycle again. It'd be comical if it wasn't so bloody annoying.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Well I noted this lunchtime on our street that the newly emptied (yesterday) communal bin on the opposite side of the street is now full. Someone in the nearby colonies is renovating their kitchen, and having had large boxes full of broken tiles, discarded kitchen units and so on dumped in the bins, they are now filling with discarded laminate flooring. I know hiring a skip is pricey these days, but really this is taking the Michael. No doubt once that bin is chocka, the bin outside our tenement will start to fill with redirected waste that otherwise would have been disposed of across the street......and so it goes.
Posted 7 years ago # -
If I was paid to complete a route, rather than work an 8 hour shift, I'd probably try and complete it in 6 hours and go home too.
I agree with that (although there will probably always be an element of wanting to get it done as quickly as possibly).
It would be nice if binmen felt that they had the time to leave bins at the side of the pavement after emptying rather than randomly scattered.
Even better if they could put them back into driveways/front paths (or maybe this could be a rule on certain very narrow pavements).
They used to come round the back of the house and carry the bin round the to the lorry, empty the bin then replace it (at that's how I remember it through my hazy, rose-tinted glasses - I expect they would also tip their caps with a "good day to you sir" while they were at it).
Posted 7 years ago # -
" No doubt once that bin is chocka, the bin outside our tenement will start to fill with redirected waste that otherwise would have been disposed of across the street......and so it goes."
I know Lesley Hinds gets a lot of stick for not making sure the bins are emptied, but really the behaviour of some Edinburgh residents sickens me.
Posted 7 years ago # -
"
Lesley Hinds (@LAHinds)
05/09/2016, 7:03 pm
@CyclingEdin @alistairkgrant @edinburghpaper new lorries have sensors,cameras and staff safety carried out"
Posted 7 years ago # -
The only time I've had a Schwalbe Marathon Plus* punctured was when I rode over a freshly broken bottle in Silverknowes, seconds after the local glass collection bin lorry had careened past me at significant speed. I am sure that the presence of broken glass on the highway and the recent passage of the bin lorry were entirely unconnected...
*Other puncture-resistant cycle tyres are available. They just aren't as good.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Living near the Powderhall facility I see an awful lot of bin lorry drivers flooring it with little apparent regard for their fellow humans. Always makes me feel a bit queasy after that guy was killed by a bin lorry several years back, crushed on the freshly installed railings at the bottom on East Claremont Street. Perceived (parental) danger became very real danger as lorry drivers failed to change their behaviour.
So, what do you do? Pay them by the route or by the number of collections and they'll try to do it as quickly as possible. You can't pay them by the hour as (communal bins exempted) the punter has to know when to put their bins out. Or they'll go slow cos it's not their problem if enough bins don't get lifted. Or teach them basic human decency when they're driving - we've seen how effective British society has been with that...
I don't get the impression these guys give much of a toss on the basis of the way the recycling boxes are launched across the road and generally smashed up by council employees within weeks of them being provided to the public.
Posted 7 years ago # -
It's rubbish rubbish driving
Posted 7 years ago # -
So, what do you do?
The technical solution would be to install GPS controlled speed limiters, limiting the speed to 10mph when performing collections and reversing speed to 2mph.
Whenever the machinery operates to lift the bin, the speed limiter kicks in for another 5 mins. That way, after they've collected all the bins and after 5mins, they can drive back to the depot at 'full' speed
The human solution is to make sure they give a ....
Posted 7 years ago # -
Recently I have had the distinct impression some of the (presumably) subcontracted recycling collections are on some form of work to rule. Our garden bin never gets collected unless you report it as a missed collection, and when you do the other bins on the same bit of street are ignored.
(End of irrelevant comment)
Posted 7 years ago # -
- I expect they would also tip their caps with a "good day to you sir" while they were at it
If my recollection of the song is anything to go by, 1950s binmen would give you a "punch up the froat"
Posted 7 years ago # -
Someone suggested that a bin lorry should have a banksman when reversing. That doesn't always help. (A competent banksman, on the other hand...)
I had a bin lorry reverse at me on a narrow street in Marchmont. There was a banksman, telling the driver that it was safe to reverse. The banksman saw me (glared at me) but just kept telling the driver to reverse. Right at me. Quite deliberately. I don't know whether or not he really wanted to kill me, but that was the impression he gave. When I asked what was going on I got an instant furious tirade of swearing yelled at me at top volume. Like pulling the cork out of a big bottle of permanent anger. From the few non-sweary words I gathered that I had been expected to (a) use my psychic powers to predict how far along the road the lorry would want to reverse, (b) magically vanish at his convenience, and anyway (c) at all times cycle in the gutter, which was full of parked cars at the time.
I could have avoided all this by cycling down a wee gap at the side of the bin lorry, if the gap hadn't been blocked by the banksman.Posted 7 years ago # -
Theory about the current state:
In the past, the large on street bins have been 'overcollected' compared to the expected volume of household waste. This has lead to people becoming accustomed to being able to dump small furniture and construction waste in them, and even if they fill up it's gone quite quickly.
So, if collections have dropped and large bins are now being collected in the same volume per household per week as wheelie bins which are really quite tiny, it would explain why all of a sudden they're exploding over the street everywhere.
That still doesn't justify the 3 mattresses, chest of drawers and suoer-jumbo pram I counted walking up Easter Rd from the links this afternoon. That stuff never would have fitted anyway.
Posted 7 years ago # -
@Klaxon, I think it is just that folk throw away a lot more stuff than they used to. Generally, as a society, we consume more goods, those goods have a lot of packaging. Some folk in tenements absolutely refuse to recycle stuff like paper, cardboard, packaging, glass or food waste, all of which have specific recycling bins. If all that stuff (plus building waste, etc.) ends up in the communal black bins, they get full really quickly.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Haven't the council started charging for every 'special uplift' now, whereas you used to get a couple of uplifts for free each year? I suspect that's led to a lot of stuff being lugged as far as the nearest communal black bin and heaved in. A lot of it probably otherwise recyclable, too.
Sadly in our street the packaging recycling bins are overflowing about every 2nd day. Bottle bank seems ok though. I must be drinking less.
Posted 7 years ago #
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