Drivers and medics say a more aggressive atmosphere has developed on roads around the port, as video shows a lorry swerving towards refugees

Lorry drivers and medics have warned of escalating violence between truckers and refugees on the roads around Calais, as footage emerged of a Hungarian truck driver who filmed himself intentionally accelerating towards people attempting to board lorries outside of the French town, forcing them off the road.

Drivers are increasingly using social media and dashboard cameras to film clashes with people from the refugee camps outside the port, as well as to vent frustration about a crisis they say is threatening their livelihoods.

Refugee children of Calais: 'I’m very homesick, I wish I could go back now' Read more

Hundreds of videos of confrontations have been shared on YouTube, with several showing young men hurling litter and rocks at lorries, and drivers punching people they have found hiding in their trailers.

The film of the Hungarian trucker, titled Calais Emigrants vs drivers and EUROPA and posted by YouTube user Á Levente Jeddi, shows dozens of men on the road in front, some covering their faces and running towards the lorry. Five minutes into the video, the driver accelerates and lurches several times towards men near the side of the road.

More than 4,000 British drivers are members of the private UK & European Lorry Drivers Safety at or Near French Ferry Ports Facebook group, which shares videos and information about delays across Europe and potential threats to drivers.

The YouTube film of the Hungarian driver has been shared multiple times by the group, and has received more than 2.4m views since it was posted on Wednesday.

Another widely shared video shows a Dutch driver telling two young women he has brought them to London, with one kissing the ground in delight – it is later revealed he has driven them to a different location in France. Another viral image shows a lorry’s smashed windscreen, allegedly caused by a wooden pole refugees threw at the vehicle’s Czech driver.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dutch truck driver tells young women he has driven them to London

Andy Stainsby, one of the group’s administrators who has been driving lorries across Europe for almost two decades, told the Guardian he could understand the Hungarian driver’s frustration, and admitted he had done similar things himself.

“I know people who do it, one of our own drivers did it this week,” Stainsby, a driver for haulage firm Harrier Express in Faversham, Kent, said of the video. “I’ve done it myself in the past though I would never do it now. If I was stuck in traffic later down the road, at the very least they’d attack the vehicle, or they could drag me out of my cab. I’m older now, my priorities have changed, I just want to get home.”

Stainsby said he felt a more aggressive atmosphere had developed between drivers and migrants recently. “For the first time in almost 20 years, I’ve felt intimidated this past week. I try to keep looking ahead, avoid eye contact because I don’t want confrontation.

“This situation [refugee stowaways in lorries] first started happening in the 1990s, but the atmosphere has changed a lot – previously people would try to get in, maybe there would be some angry words, but now they are so aggressive,” he said, citing the incident with the wooden pole. “They are desperate, but they attack innocent people just trying to make a living.”

Life in a refugee camp: 'the cold and fear get in your bones' Read more

The chief medic coordinating volunteer doctors at the Calais camp, Jean-François Corty from Doctors of the World, said tensions had increased because of heightened security around the ports and Channel tunnel terminal, leaving refugees with no option but to stow away on a lorry.

“We’ve treated more than 500 people wounded since July alone, but that is not just confrontation with drivers, it’s violence between migrants, or with police, or with traffickers or injuries from climbing into vehicles ... there are cuts, broken legs,” he said.

“Drivers do get very nervous, especially when we see the people running from the camps trying to create a traffic jam so they can get onboard. Some will get very angry when they see the people inside.

“Obviously confrontations occur, it’s the [right] conditions for violence when people are desperate. We cannot condone people trying to make an accident voluntarily but really it is the French authorities who need to tackle the situation.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Migrants inside the Calais camp known as the Jungle. Photograph: Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images

Corty said his medics in Calais regularly treated people with eye problems caused by teargas, but stressed that most had been in confrontation with police rather than drivers. Only police can legally carry CS gas in Britain, but France allows anyone over 18 to buy the gas in a limited concentration. At least one petrol station close to the port is reported to be stocking canisters of CS gas – which have been bought by British drivers, according to a Sunday People investigation last month.

In October, a Suffolk lorry driver was spared jail after police found a stun gun that doubled as a torch inside his lorry. Norman Garrett, 52, was given a suspended sentence after pleading guilty to possessing a prohibited weapon. He denied he ever intended to use it against people trying to get into his lorry, but admitted he felt intimidated passing through the port.

The plight of refugees is the crisis of our times | Katharine Viner Read more

Stainsby said he took claims that many drivers were carrying teargas, stun guns or pepper spray “with a pinch of salt”, and said he suspected the real number carrying weapons was miniscule.

“You are taking a big risk if you carry something like that,” he said. “Even though people are coming at us every night, if we get caught with something, we can be prosecuted very quickly.”

Corty said the Paris terror attacks two weeks ago had also made organisations like his more vulnerable to a backlash.

Three days after the suicide bombers struck the French capital, Doctors of the World’s mobile medical unit was burned down in central Calais. “We do suspect it was criminal, because it happened so soon after the attacks, and it was far away from anything that could have caused it accidentally,” Corty said.