Safe Speed Forums

A change of work locations gives me a longer journey down a fast SC A road, peppered with cautious drivers, trucks and nutcases.

I've found myself cruising up to lines of traffic behind trucks keeping a safe gap and concluding its not even worth trying an overtake as i'd have to find several safe spots to even get to the source of the obstruction. it may be possible, but i'm not that aggressive a driver and hey i'm only going to work!

Some drivers however don't agree and work their way up the queue, some overtakes i agree are doable, some are blind crests & solid white muppetry.

These drivers often put themselves on the wrong side of the road in dubious positions and the overtakes almost invariably end in breaking and squeezing into someone elses safety gap (i have to fight very hard not to close ths gap as they pass!).

The few overtakes I have done are considered, smooth and i hope safe, and leave me either backing off to drop speed gently, or staying at my passing speed and pulling away from the overtakee.

Since my radio is broken.. my mind has been musing over the following statement:

A poor overtake is.... one that ends in braking.

i.e.
If you can't maintain your passing speed after an overtake, maybe you shouldnt have done it to start with.

I'm sure there are exceptions and other measures that could be applied.

Discuss

I might be tempted to modify it to say "a poor overtake is one that ends with the car that you've just overtaken braking".

I spend half my life these days on Single carriageway twisty hilly "A" roads and my friendly local Scamera partnership will insist on setting up their vans on the few straights that allow safe overtaking. It's not uncommon now to see people accelerate hard, overtake as fast as possible and brake again rather than just gently decelerate back to the limit (or thereabouts) just in case the scammers are out.

I like the way you are thinking with a couple of exceptions...



I don't like that - a quick safe overtake in a powerful car might well end up in braking even with a large (4 second) return gap. It can be a question of how much speed have you picked up during the acceleration phase.

When I do brake after overtaking acceleration, I tend to do it in a nice straight line on the 'wrong' side of the road before sliding left into my gap. Lots of reasons... braking straight is always good; rushing up the behind of the car in front is always bad; if I'm out I have better vision if the chance to overtake another presents; I have time because the overtake wasn't marginal to start with; the folk on the left can see I'm aligning myself with a particular gap.

I don't mind 'working my way through a queue'. It can be very helpful around here (North Scotland) where it isn't uncommon to find a queue of 6 or 8 behind a heavy or a caravan with miles of clear road beyond.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Someone wrote in to a magazine a while back saying that you could tell bad drivers because there'd be lots of brake dust around the front wheels - a good driver wouldn't need to use their brakes.

That might be fair enough if the world consisted only of motorways, but on roads with bends brakes are generally acknowledged to be a useful tool in making reasonable and safe progress!!

This strikes me as a bit similar - yes, one should avoid the car behind having to brake for you if possible (but if you've judged your speed correctly coming back in they shouldn't have to anyway as long as they had a safe gap to the car in front of them) - but to suggest you shouldn't have to brake yourself implies

As people are increasingly disinclined to overtake anyway it does make it harder to progress through a line of traffic, as you have to overtake every single one of them where if half of them were doing the same thing you'd only have to overtake half the original line yourself - and particularly in more built-up regions it can seem fruitless since there's a dual carriageway 5 miles ahead and you won't have got through the queue by then anyway.

I spend most of my days in a London office but a few times a year have to drive Newcastle Airport-Carlisle and back (got one coming up next week) and it is still very possible to progress through a line of traffic there: people are much more ready for it, there are good open stretches of road with the odd crawler lane up hills, etc.

Unfortunately we do seem to be in a downward spiral - fewer people overtake, so more people get upset/worried by overtaking etc. - so fewer people overtake.

Ian