I am stunned at the ignorance of some people on here. So here goes my bit.
Dassie - The max legal speed for an HGV on a motorway is 60mph, so how can you make that a minimum?, but due to the joys of the EU we are limited to 56mph anyway.
There are a fair few crawler lanes in the UK, but there are not that many more on the continent. Of course, in Germany and France they just build the roads wider rather than pandering to all the tree huggers and not building it wide enough.
So we put all the trucks on the road at night. I bet all the people who work at depots, shops etc will be really glad to work through the night receiving deliveries. This would make no difference anyway. There are about 450,000 trucks on the UK roads and over 40 million cars! Thats almost 100 cars (carrying one person mainly) to every truck (that is providing a service to you). Only about 3% of trucks on UK roads come from overseas (where did you get 75%?). As to putting more freight on the rails; don't know about you, but my Tesco doesn't have a railhead! If you were to double the amount of railfreight, do you know how many trucks would come off the road? Less than 2%. The basic problem is we just do not have a decent rail infrastructure in this country since Dr Beeching did his thing in the 60's.
I regularly drive on the motorway with lanes 2 and 3 full of cars trying to get round each other whilst I trundle up lane 1 and can just about see another truck 500 yds ahead. Why won't car drivers pull over? I do when I'm driving. Its just plain ignorance. And don't get me started on 'slip road slammers', non use of indicators by cars, and the rule in the Highway Code that says "You must overtake the truck at all costs with no thought for anyones safety" (Must be in there somewhere, 'cos thats what everyone does!
Remember, if you bought it, a truck brought it, so try and be a bit more tolerant and grateful!