freddieflintoff2005 wrote:
My tuppence worth:
Just to say I fully understand the frustration of the situation described and how tempting it is to follow the car in front overtaking through, despite the possible dangers. I have experienced a very similar situation myself on an A-road where I was 3rd in a line of traffic behind a lorry (1st and going 45 ish), and a car (2nd). I went to overtake the car and lorry on a decent straight when the car pulled out as described in the OP. Judging there to be enough space for the overtake I followed behind, with the car going frustratingly slowly. This is where the unexpected problem arose:
Traffic was now approaching from the opposite direction, albeit a fair distance away. However, the car in front pulled in front of the lorry and then proceeded to slow to the lorry's pace without leaving enough gap to fit into. This left me with an additional car length to overtake, or drop back a whole lorry length - involving some hard braking and the hope that there was still the space we had both vacated. Luckily, I made a quick decision gunned it to overtake the car as well. Thankfully he didn't begin racing me and I managed to make it with relatively little panic. It was something I'd never thought of before when planning an overtake, but I do now! Could have been nasty.
Yup - not a nice place to be. Thus the need to not only be sure you have enough space to get past but also to have identified the space you're going to pull back into (I'm sure this is mentioned somewhere on SafeSpeed).