Safe Speed Forums

I'm interested in members' comments and advice on the following story.

Last year, on Dundee's dual carriageway, I moved into the outside lane to overtake a truck. I was travelling at the speed limit (50mph). The nearest car in that lane was about 100m away. It came up fast behind, tailgated, flashed its lights and hooted. I didn't retaliate in any way but carried on, because there was a truck coming up on my left. When I'd passed it and moved back to the inside lane, the car driver cut in front of me and slowed down. And so, not wishing to provoke him further, did I. Later, I moved out to overtake him, whereupon he speeded up.

No doubt this is all standard stuff; but for the unpleasant aftermath. When I related this to my solicitor, he took the hostile view that I myself might have committed a violation of the Road Traffic Act. He thought that pulling out and balking someone, albeit he was going too fast, could be considered Careless Driving. He said and I quote: “You are guilty of Careless Driving on your own admission. I’m an Advanced Driver. I used to race cars although I don’t hurry now. If I’d been on the Bench I’d have found you guilty. You’d fail a Driving Test if you did that manoeuvre. Even if the car was 5000 yards away. You must not balk other vehicles even if they’re speeding. It might have been going to hospital with a dangerously ill baby on board.”

Any comments on this would be welcome.

And the reason I was consulting a solicitor? Well, the car driver made a complaint to the police. He fabricated a completely different incident, which was backed up by a motorcyclist and pillion passenger who must be friends of his. For good measure, these 2 added a couple of incidents of their own. At odds of 3 against 1, I didn't stand a chance. I was convicted of Careless Driving, though not on the overtaking manoeuvre related above.

Sack the solicitor for insolence.

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I stole this .sig

On this description it looks as if your solcitor was the only one 'in the right'.

It's unfortunate and dangerous that many people believe that the speed limit defines what may or may not be safe. It does not.

Let me give you an example. Use the same situation, but make the faster car much closer. It's doing 75mph in the 50 limit in L2 and you're doing 50mph in the 50 limit in L1. When the faster car is just 10 feet behind you swerve into L2. This action would cause a crash, but despite the fact that the other vehicle was exceeding the speed limit the crash would still be your fault. It's for this reason that the solicitor is right to say you were guilty of careless driving by your own admission - your actions were not sufficient to cause a crash, but were of the same class as actions that would cause a crash.

As for false evidence being offered against you - well that's far worse. If you are certain that the evidence was false, then why not make a formal complaint to the Police. Giving false evidence is a serious criminal offence.

In a more general sense, taking an action while driving that forces another road user to alter course or speed is (at best) not good driving. In these cases it's better to wait in L1 until a safe space appears in L2.

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

What is the complaint the other driver is making?

Why would they go to trouble of reporting you to the Police?

Sorry for my suspicion but what would they gain from making a complaint up? No accident occured so they are not going to get any money.

The apportioning of blame here is a trade off between the level of inappropriateness of his speed and the level of inconvenience (balking) conducted by yourself.

Taking responsibilty for your own and others safety while driving will reduce these conflict situations to an absolute minimum.

Can't comment on your case though, not enough info, although it sounds like your solicitor's advice was a little one sided.

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Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.

Ian

Interesting problem. You're right of course - at some threshold the responsibilty transfers. Inappropriate speed would be the main test. I want to know if we can define the region of transition.

For the sake of discussion let's assume three vehicles - a goods vehicle at about 40mph in L1, our OP is at 50mph behind the truck and our target vehicle is in L2 approaching at x mph.

The road is an entirely rural dual carriageway, straight, clear, dry and daylight, no special hazards are visible. There's a 50mph speed limit applied for an unknown reason.

Just how fast does the target have to be travelling before responsibility reaches 50/50? My initial guess is about 100mph. This is because the optimal speed differential for passing is in the region of +25mph.

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

Taking your account as strictly accurate, I would say that both drivers were in the wrong.

If the distance between you and the following car was 100m, and let's suppose it was travelling at 75mph, the time separation between you would have been ~3 seconds. To shed 25mph would have taken 1.25s at emergency braking effort + reaction time (say) 0.75s means the driver would have had to apply emergency braking effort just to maintain a (inadequate) 1s separation. Nobody likes to have to apply emergency braking at 75mph. So the first conclusion I draw is that you were wrong to commence your overtake. You should have seen the following car in your mirror and waited for him to pass. If that meant you had to brake for the truck ahead then so be it.

On the other hand, the driver of the following vehicle was also in the wrong in several respects. First, he should have anticipated, seeing you ahead with the truck in front of you, that you may wish to overtake and moderated the speed differential in case you did decide to pull out. This responsibility is more acute when, as in this case, the following car is driving above the posted limit. Second, pulling back in front of you and baulking you is not an appropriate reaction. If he had anticipated correctly, he may have been slightly inconvenienced by your manoeuvre but no worse.

My conclusion would be 50:50 fault and I don't think you were sufficiently in the wrong to justify a due care charge.

I think you're way off there Paul. First, 25 mph is not an optimal speed differential in those circumstances. If I was in the following car, I would observe a car ahead closing on the truck behind him and not commit to passing unless I was reasonably sure he was allowing me through ahead.

In any event, I'd say passing another vehicle at anywhere near 100mph in a 50mph limit puts the overtaker at least 90% at fault.

Point taken. The anticipation part of it is critical in the real world and absent in the example I was considering. The fix here is to move the truck further away. Our L2 target driver correctly judges that he'll be past the L1 car while the L1 car is still at least 3 seconds behind the truck. There's no good reason for the L1 vehicle to pull out.

The optimum passing speed is calculable as the minima of
a) the time exposed to sideswipe while along side and
b) the time exposed to the risk of being unable to slow in time if a vehicle on the left changes lane in front of you.

Higher speeds reduce a) and increase b). Where a=b is the optimal passing speed. I've calculated a lot of examples (none recently) and each and every example has resulted in a=b somewhere in the range 15 to 30mph.

My 100mph reasoning was that 75mph is likely to be an optimal passing speed, therefore at all speeds up to 75, 100% of the responsibility must be with the L1 driver. Above 75mph responsibility starts to shift. 50/50 at 100mph still seems reasonable to me. Maybe I'm now oversensitised to the risks associated with 'trusting the speed limit'.

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

We can't exclude the overtaker's responsibility to anticipate. A 50mph speed differential is just too great to make an overtaking manoeuvre 'responsible' unless the driver can be 99% sure that the overtakee is not going to pull out. Calculating that the overtakee won't 'need' to pull out until you're past just isn't good enough.

In those circumstances, I would be reducing speed to perhaps 15mph differential as I come up behind and assessing whether there is any real risk of him pulling out. Then, if I am reasonably satisfied that the overtakee has seen me or will not pull out, I may nail it to get past quickly so as not to incovenience him or spend any time in his blind spot.

We also have to consider that a driver at the posted limit would not reasonably expect people to be passing him at a very high speed differential. The judgment of whether one can pull out, overtake and get back in without baulking a car behind is not that easy and a physical distance of 100m may appear sufficient to a driver whose time/distance judgment is not highly developed. That realisation should influence the behaviour of the overtaker.

For these reasons, I would put a 100mph overtaker in your scenario as 90% at fault and suggest a responsible differential is not more than that which can be shed without drama (saving the overtakee pulling out without reason literally under his bonnet).

[edit]If I was doing 100mph on a 50mph limit d/c (unlikely), I cannot imagine passing another vehicle at that sort of differential even if it was the only car in sight. I would always reduce the differential as I approach just in case the totally unexpected happens.[/edit]

I couldn't agree more - but we were looking for the point of equal degrees of irresponsibility weren't we?

Pulling out in front of another vehicle is a serious error. Passing way too fast is a serious error.

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

OK - but you suggested 100mph. I couln't put it anywhere near that. Perhaps it's one of those questions where you know what the answer isn't but can't say what it is (like braking distances). Anyway, why do we need to know?

100mph was an 'opening offer'. You haven't really said anything to change my mind although you have advanced a range of perfectly sensible discussion points.

Why do we need to know? In my mind it's these reasons:

1) We need to define what responsible behaviour is by reference to irresponsible behaviour.

2) We have some small moral duty to the original poster to answer his question in a sophisticated way.

3) It's interesting in its own right, and anyway it might spin off into something else that's really important. You never know!

4) We need to spread the word about sophisticated judgements that are really the foundations of road safety.

I expect there's more, but the bottom line is that I find it interesting!

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

I agree with the direction the above discussion is going.

One point Observer made is worth considering, as it has some negative implications...

Often the overtakee will, in an effort to be considerate, sit in lane one, watching the approaching vehicle approach at a closing speed of say 40mph. He'll be thinking to himself.... I can sit here and close in slightly on this HGV ahead, in the safe knowledge that the approaching vehicle will be past by the time I have to pull out to pass the HGV. In this way the overtakee is planning and being courteous.

The overtaker on the other hand is thinking to himself.... I'm travelling slightly too quickly for a safe overtake on this car and HGV. Besides, the car in lane one will wish to overtake the HGV. He reasonably may not have seen or considered me yet because he may not have fully appreciated my closing speed. I'll therefore reduce my speed accordingly to a sensible passing speed.

The consequences of these simultaneous and courteous thought processes is the classic pincer situation, where the overtakee finds himself getting drawn into the HGV because he cannot properly gauge the closing speed of the overtaking vehicle. The overtaker is also reducing his speed still further because the whole situation is getting tighter and tighter. He's now waiting for the overtakee to pull out in a desperate attempt to stake his claim to the overtaking gap. The overtakee is wondering why this chap has decided to slow down rather than simply glide past.

The entire sorry episode resolves itself by both parties squeezing past the HGV, then lining up alongside, staring at each other in a befuddled disbelief that both of them can make such a Corriemuchloch(n) (qv) of such a simple job.



It's one of the reasons why I'd argue against tolerating high closing speeds on the motorway. I also believe it is one of the reasons why we get so many lane two hoggers.

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Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.

Ian

OK. Let's think about that. First, I'd ask if you're looking to define the point of "equal degrees of irresponsibility" (of the driving behaviour) or the point of "equal degrees of responsibility" (for a crash). I think they're different but open to discussion on the point.

If the latter, are we talking about actual responsibility or moral responsibility or legal responsibility? Q. Are those all different? A. Yes - definitely.



Hey - I'm up for the debate if you are.

I'd partly agree with the last observation, Ian, but the other big reason, in my book (apart from straightforward indiscipline), is inadequate following distances. I rarely leave less than 3 seconds gap to the car in front and I'm very happy for another vehicle to use the gap to overtake (unless they dither, which is a bit irritating). I am abolutely convinced we would see better traffic flow on congested motorways if all vehicles observed at least 2 seconds following distance.

Getting back to the topic, I also recognise the Corriemuchloch effect although find that better forward observation/anticipation will make it less likely. When it's happened to me, as overtaker, I usually end up feeling slightly guilty that I did not do more to communicate my willingness to show I was 'leaving the door open'. Two ways to get round it: (i) a quick flash (but can be misinterpreted ); (ii) a brief (and early) switch to the adjacent lane on the left.

Oh yes. I'm a big fan of (ii). The headlight flash is a bit of a dead duck because it's so ambiguous.

A frequent variation (of (ii)) for me is to move half a lane left - moving a full lane left can sometimes make the vehicle ahead think you're about to be overtaken by something very rapid.

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

Let's stick with moral responsibility. Legal responsibility is undermined by the need for evidence. I don't know what 'actual responsibility' is, so I'll steer clear of that one!

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

Sorry new boy here please feel free to throw rocks at me

When i was young and rode bikes there was a guy at my local bike shop who was bleating about having two accidents in six months with cars pulling out on him.

Me and my mate chatted to him for a bit and found the first accident happened when a car pulled out of a junction in front of him the car turning right) when he reckons he was doing ninety through a thirty (he could have been the road was very straight)

The second was when he was doing seventy through a thirty down a different road and crashed into the back of a car that pulled out in front of him (the car this time tuning left)

Now obviously this was the sort of guy that you would not trust to be telling the truth about his speed and at the time both me and my mate thought he was a twat that gave bikers a bad name but........

were we right?

My thinking was that the car drivers in both accidents probably didnt expect someone to be traveling that fast and made a driving error (but a minor one)

Large pinch of salt time. Had there been a grain of truth in his stories he probably wouldn't have been around to tell them.
And if you're lucky enough to survive that sort of stunt once, you certainly don't do it again - unless you're the kind of completely brain-dead tw*t that the human gene pool can well do without.



I've seen people pulling out directly into the path of slow, lumbering lorries, in broad daylight.

Were you right? I'd say yes and no.

Cheers
Peter