Safe Speed Forums

This follows on from some of the discourse going on in the 'Mud on the Roads' thread in the 'Improving Road Safety' section, i.e. BW rigidly defending speed limits.

I overtook a car doing approx 45mph in an NSL yesterday. It was a sharp overtake, -it needed to be as the straight was short, but safe and not rushed. As is often the case, at the end of the overtake, I was over the speed limit (about 75mph in this case). I eased off to an appropriate speed as a bend approached.

It strikes me that overtaking is a simple process but one which conveys big responsibilities. To rigidly impose the NSL could be dangerous here though. Sometimes the overtaken car resents the overtaker and speeds up. Sometimes (as yesterday) the overtake happens downhill and the overtaken car gathers a few mph. Its always going to come down to a judgement call for each individual situation, ie bale out or press on. Pressing on will need good judgement and the power to execute safely of course.

Its likely that I'll get told by some to treat the speed limit as a ceiling and do not consider an overtake which would breach it. But life isn't as simple as that and provided your speed is not making the manouvre inherently less safe, then surely its a justifiable course of action.

Thoughts?

I am sure there are a number of points of view on this one. Mine is that the safest overtaking is the one that is done the quickest. I feel safer doing 80 for 3 seconds than 60 for 10 seconds on a single lane if the road is straight enough.

Also I have had occasions where there are a number of trucks nose to tail on a crawler lane. I have been in the overtaking lane getting passed the column of vehicles going up a hill, then the roads merge just over the brow. I have had to speed up so as not to go over the double white lines. I tough call but there was not enough gap between the trucks for a single car length!

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Speed camera policy Kills

in (any) of the above scenarios i always consider the speed differential and whether i can get safely past within the limit. in some circumstances the slower car has to be going very very slowly to make a pass within the limit feasible.

in general if i don't think i can make it within the limit (+around 5mph speedo misreading allowance) i settle back for the ride.
often i factor into the equation the worst case scenario which is that i meet myself coming the other way at the most inconvenient point in the manoeuvre... which more often than not makes me back of & relax.

on other (random?) occasions i.e. hassled, in a rush, days ending witha Y etc. i'll up my personal limit and make the pass safely if not legally.

its a trade off between time on the wrong side of the road and potential collision speed i guess.

I personally do not look at the speedometer when overtaking on a single carriageway road.

I am far more concerned with performing a safe overtaking maneuover as well as being vigilantly aware of any existing and/or new hazards that occur whilst overtaking.

In my opinion anyone who is worrying about their speed when they overtake on a NSL road is causing a danger to themselves and to other road users.

Prime case in point, I overtook a police car the other weekend on my bike (it was a Lexus). I completely nailed the throttle as I went past him after having a good view of the road ahead, and moving out for a look. I then immediately slowed back to the NSL. 500 yards down the road, blue lights came on, and I thought, WTF is his problem, is he going to bollock me for overtaking him?

Up he came, and said "Sorry sir for stopping you, I just wanted to admire your bike." He then proceeded to ask me about how it handled etc. He then said he had always liked my style of bike (v-twin superbike) and he was hoping to get a similar machine when he passed his bike test. I would guess that I probably far exceeded the NSL as I went past the officer, but it was the safest way to perform the manouver. The fact that he didn't tell me off proves it!

In my experience (and knowing a few officers), a police officer would far rather see an overtake performed as safely and as quickly as possible even if that means breaking the speed limit....as long as its done safely and under control.

Its a bit like trying to secure a computer system against hackers. You do all you can to reduce the threat surface that can be exploited.

As a motorist, your threat surface is being exposed on the other side of the road. To reduce this, you must get past as quickly and as safely as possible.

I seem to recall that's defensive driving as well....might be talking rubbish though
Thats my rant and 2 penneth over!

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"Are you sh**ing me?"
"John Spartan, you are fined one credit for a violation of the verbal morality statute."

I don't know many trafpol who would prosecute for a reasonably executed safe overtake which took the speed over the limit.

I wouldn't agree that the fastest overtake is the safest, what's needed is smooth progressive acceleration followed by similarly smooth deceleration.

Any overtake which needs full accelleration should not be undertaken.

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

Ian

Depends what you drive.

If it is a Panda you may need full throttle

If its an EVO VII maybe not

I don't think you can generalise. I don't know where "smooth" fits in when the process takes only a few seconds.

The most importand thing is SAFE. Good visibility, no junctions, no bends, no hidden dips.

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Speed camera policy Kills

[quote="IanH"]I don't know many trafpol who would prosecute for a reasonably executed safe overtake which took the speed over the limit.
.[/quote]

Not even if the trafpol happened to be a camera?

It was smooth progressive full throttle
Then smooth progressive braking back to the NSL, no pin it then slam it here. If I had snapped it to full throttle, it would have wheelied, then I suspect the officer would have pulled me for not being in proper control

And well said Camera Magnet - camera's dont take into account overtaking etc

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"Are you sh**ing me?"
"John Spartan, you are fined one credit for a violation of the verbal morality statute."

No - I agree with Ian. If the overtake can only be 'safe' with maximum acceleration then, by definition, there is little or no safety margin. If that is the case, the overtake is not really 'on'.

Ahh. I spot a fallacy!

Let's say we've got a medium power vehicle and a reasonable overtaking opportunity. When we accelerate are we going to give it 'all the beans' or 'keep something in reserve'?

Let's say we get half way past and decide there's a need for greater haste. If we'd kept something in reserve we haven't accelerated as hard and we've got further to go for safety. Our overall time exposed to danger is greater.

So keeping something in reserve for overtaking by way of not using full throttle just doesn't work. It increases risk.

But I believe there are two good points in the same area.

Firstly there's overtaking in a high power vehicle. You might know that you have time to complete your planned overtake but the oncomer won't know what engine you have and if he doesn't believe you have time there could be trouble. I learned this one the hard way. Driving and overtaking in an enthusiastic manner in a very quick Alpina BMW about 20 years ago, I had a chance to overtake and pull back in in good time before conflict with an oncoming artic. So I pulled out and started on my move. The oncoming artic didn't see it the same way and he's diving for the verge. The image of dust coming up off he nearside wheels is permanently burned into my memory. Nothing happened but I learned that day that it isn't enough to know that you can make it. Everyone else has to know that you can make it too. You can't use the full performance of a fast vehicle to enable overtakes in small gaps because other folk may panic.

Secondly, and I think we touched on it elsewhere recently, there's an issue of speed differential - too much and we're seriously at risk from vehicles we're overtaking.

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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

Pehaps I have more experience than you. I didn't say you HAVE to cut it to the line on timing.

I to believe it is safer to be on the left hand side of the road than the right so I have found in my experience that it is safest to complete the overtaking in the shortest posible time on single lane roads. The longer you take the more chance there is of something unforseen happening. This is far more dangerous.

If I am not absolutley sure that I can do it safely taking into account all the variables, and that includes power, I do not do it.

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Speed camera policy Kills

In order to pass any vehicle in a Panda you might like to give it full acceleration, as this is what you'll need to get past with the maximum safety.
But I'd not like to overtake in a Panda if the limited acceleration it offered me was all required to complete the overtake, ie no safety margin.




Any manoeuvre which requires you not to be smooth must in my book incorporate some past present or future safety compromise.

I believe that we need to overtake in a smooth safe manner. That does not mean slowly, it just means smoothly. If an overtake needs to be rushed, its a bad overtake.

Clog and anchor overtakes are aggressive in my view. If you are overtaking in a line of traffic, I'd much rather see a smooth overtaking action which can be reconsidered and aborted if necessary rather than a foot to the floor overtake requiring heavy braking into the safety zone of the car in front.

I've seen similar problems a few times on the camera vans where a driver has seen an overtaking opportunity. He's put his foot to the floor to get past three cars and an artic. By the time he sees the camera van he has committed himself to the overtake. He's then left trying to pull back, or continue the overtake at 65ish.
Disciplining yourself to the smooth considered overtake, allowing options for reconsidering the manoeuvre, may mean that you miss out on 20% of overtakes which might previously have been considered, but you have built in extra safety and courtesy parameters into your overtake.


Absolutely!

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

Ian

I'm not saying don't give it full acceleration. However if that acceleration compromises

1. smoothness
2. the ability to reconsider the manoeuvre
3. the ability to deal with an unforseen hazard eg one of the line of vehicles you are overtaking pulls out to overtake

then there's a safety compromise.



Both excellent points. We may have all experienced the first example, where the approaching traffic has a different perception.
I did almost precisely the same as Paul on my advanced training, and was the embarrassed subject of a fairly negative debrief by my trainer and my colleagues that afternoon .

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

Ian

In my experience this particular problem does not appear until the vehicle you're driving is quicker than about 8 seconds 0 to 60. I'm always extremely wary these days of any overtake that requires 'sub 8 second' performance.

Obviously it's still possible to misjudge something, but that's not at all the problem I was trying to highlight.

The problem is almost unknown, however. It's never appeared in any book that I've read and has only come up in discussions when I've brought it up.

Ian, do you have much in the way of evidence of vehicles running off the road because they believed erroneously that an oncoming overtaker couldn't make it?

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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 always overtake at full throttle in my car but not on my bike. I'm surprised I've been doing it wrong. I'm still accelerating faster on the bike by a distance.

If you think I've said you're doing it wrong then I think we have a misunderstanding.

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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 get a few manner of driving complaints regarding this issue, but perception is the problem. The complaint always comes from the car driver who has taken to the verge.

It's difficult for us to know whether the overtaker actually had sufficient space to execute the manoeuvre, because we only get the 'victim's' perception of the danger.

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

Ian

I was referring to IanH

Thanks. It's tricky isn't it?

I've been flashed at for overtaking when the oncoming vehicle was at least a quarter of a mile away after my move was complete. Perception is everything...

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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

Important word 'needs'...

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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