Overtaking - Can you do it?
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It seriously worries me that we are very quickly becoming a nation of people who can't turn a steering wheel or even look ahead to determine if we can overtake!!
This weekend we decided to go to the welsh coast and on route came across the usual assortment of slow moving vehicles. People who haven't had a driving lesson in many a long year and either didn't know the national speed limit on a single road was 60 mph or who just couldn't be bothered to do it.
You had the usual assortment of caravans and trailers and then we encountered a new type of driver, the MPV driver. You know the ones that can fit upto 7 or 8 people in, now because they are higher than most cars, it seems that every corner or bend that we came across, no matter how shallow, they seem to have a need to apply the brakes whether they are needed or not!! Which is more of a comfort thing for them rather than a safety issue.
But by far the most annoying thing was to come to a slow moving line of traffic and finding when we came across a stretch of road that was flat, long and open, NOBODY tried to overtake the slow moving vehicle causing the hold up!! When you are about the 8th car back this becomes hugely annoying, as it was clear none of the front 3 cars were remotely interested in even TRYING to overtake, so there we all were on a 60 mph road doing 35 when there was no need to. You could see drivers getting annoyed further back which led to 1 or 2 in fast powered cars overtaking in stupid places.
Yet if you caused a tailback like this and then did not try to overtake the slower vehicle when safe, on your driving test it would be an INSTANT FAIL. The reason being you would cause road rage and therefore make people overtake in dangerous places and if a crash happened YOU would be a major factor in causing it!
This is why it has long been suggested that people have refresher driving lessons every 5 or 6 years, but it seems that it will never be made law, so we'll have to put up with the driving sheep every sunny weekend.
This weekend we decided to go to the welsh coast and on route came across the usual assortment of slow moving vehicles. People who haven't had a driving lesson in many a long year and either didn't know the national speed limit on a single road was 60 mph or who just couldn't be bothered to do it.
You had the usual assortment of caravans and trailers and then we encountered a new type of driver, the MPV driver. You know the ones that can fit upto 7 or 8 people in, now because they are higher than most cars, it seems that every corner or bend that we came across, no matter how shallow, they seem to have a need to apply the brakes whether they are needed or not!! Which is more of a comfort thing for them rather than a safety issue.
But by far the most annoying thing was to come to a slow moving line of traffic and finding when we came across a stretch of road that was flat, long and open, NOBODY tried to overtake the slow moving vehicle causing the hold up!! When you are about the 8th car back this becomes hugely annoying, as it was clear none of the front 3 cars were remotely interested in even TRYING to overtake, so there we all were on a 60 mph road doing 35 when there was no need to. You could see drivers getting annoyed further back which led to 1 or 2 in fast powered cars overtaking in stupid places.
Yet if you caused a tailback like this and then did not try to overtake the slower vehicle when safe, on your driving test it would be an INSTANT FAIL. The reason being you would cause road rage and therefore make people overtake in dangerous places and if a crash happened YOU would be a major factor in causing it!
This is why it has long been suggested that people have refresher driving lessons every 5 or 6 years, but it seems that it will never be made law, so we'll have to put up with the driving sheep every sunny weekend.