Tag: overtaking

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74. Overtaking on left-handers – experts only or best avoided?

Some things don’t seem to change. And how motorcyclists kill themselves is one of those things. I said in the article that “half of out-of-town fatalities result from overtakes that go wrong” is valid, and the data that the UK’s DfT continues to collect reinforces this point. Overtaking generally is rarely ‘necessary’, and overtaking around a left-hand bend is even less so. Remember, in most cases a better, safer opportunity will appear within moments.

Overtaking on left-handers – experts only or best avoided?

Back in 2005 and 2006, one of the best series of articles on advanced riding techniques was penned by Andy Morrison from Rapid Training, and published in Bike magazine. But when he talked about the technique of overtaking in left-handers in February 2006, I think he went the proverbial ‘bridge too far’. He stated plainly enough that it’s dangerous but then goes on to assert that it’s a manoeuvre within the grasp of the expert rider. The article gave the impression that all that’s needed is a high level of technical skill and judgement yet whatever dissenting voices might say, there is something every one of us should understand: contrary to claims elsewhere, overtaking is NEVER, EVER ‘safe’. Even if we can be reasonably sure WE won’t make a mistake, when overtaking there are always other humans involved and one thing we can be sure of is that humans can and DO make errors. An overtake ALWAYS exposes us to the risk of someone else’s mistake.

I read the article and the first thing that struck me was that it focused on technical execution. Yet to my mind, understanding that the skills to carry out a tricky overtake are complex is far less important than developing our understanding of risk and our ability to see that technically complicated manoeuvres are more likely to go wrong. It’s our ability to make a realistic risk assessment that allows us to place a manoeuvre on the risk / benefit scale. To my mind, for a relatively limited benefit, this one is far over towords the risky end. We really need to understand the difference between ‘need’ and ‘nice’.

Overtaking generally sits further towards the ‘nice to do’ end of the spectrum than the ‘need to do’ end – it’s very rarely an absolute ‘must-do’. You may have heard people say that “if I didn’t overtake, I might as well not be on a bike”, or that “I overtake because I want to demonstrate I can make progress”.

Personally, I think they are deeply flawed reasons. My own thinking – based on that risk / benefit calculation – is that we need to balance the risks that might arise through making the overtake, with the risks of staying put. If there’s no particular problem with following – for example, when moving in a steady stream of traffic – the less-risky option is nearly always choosing NOT to pass.

I’d suggest that overtaking only begins to move towards the ‘need to do’ end of the scale if sitting behind a vehicle puts us at greater risk than making the overtake. Maybe we’re following a tractor on a rural road, when a queue of traffic begins to form behind us. If a relatively straightforward opportunity to pass arises and we don’t take it, we are now part of the problem. The chances are that someone will try to overtake both the tractor and our bike. That makes the overtake more difficult for the driver, and potentially increases our own risk. So if we can see a way to set up an overtake in such a way to minimise the risk, does that tip the balance? Perhaps. The crux of the matter is “if we can see a way to set up an overtake in such a way to minimise the risk”. Too many overtakes are assessed from the “what do I gain” perspective first, with risk trailing a very poor second.

And so we come to overtaking out of left-hand bend. Compared with setting up a pass out of a right-hand corner, overtaking out of a left hand bend generates a lot of “What ifs…?” that aren’t easy to answer.

We start by setting up the overtake by sitting to the nearside, looking up the inside of the vehicle ahead. The article pointed out problems of dead ground (that is, the areas that are blind to our search) but however thorough our search, we need to be absolutely clear that if we cannot see over the vehicle, there’s a blind spot ahead of it on the offside. As we move out to the right to commit to the pass, that blindspot doesn’t go away – it simply moves. There is ALWAYS this blind spot.

Some years ago, I watched a rider set up exactly this pass around a sweeping left-hand bend from the car. His line-of-sight up the nearside was good, but he couldn’t see what I could, thanks to my driving position offset to the right. It was the local postie climbing into his bright red post office van that was pulled up in a layby on the other side of the road. As the rider moved across behind the truck, the post office van started to move forward. The rider came out from behind the truck just as the PO van moved into the road.

And of course, if a vehicle could pull out, the one we’re overtaking could turn in, and we may not be aware of the turning for the same reason. This is another point I always make – overtaking ALWAYS relies on the driver we’re passing to do what we predict. Setting up an overtake where we’re visible in the driver’s interior or right-hand door mirror means that there’s at least a chance the driver will know we’re there. But sat to the nearside of the vehicle we’re about to pass, not only are we far more difficult to see, few drivers would expect to find us overtaking around the outside a moment later. We really do need to hang back long enough to clear the view right along our path and eliminate any openings.

And there’s a further problem. It’s the pesky extra warning about making sure the road not just clear but that we can “expect it to remain clear”. The neatly-drawn diagrams in the magazine showed how the rider would need to ‘visually sweep’ the road ahead of the lorry before attempting the overtake. Although the text talked about “far enough ahead” the diagrams showed a distance of just a couple of lorry-lengths. I know the diagrams were drawn distorted to make the point (rather like the ones showing how a wider position gives a better view in ‘Motorcycle Roadcraft’), and Andy did mention the danger of meeting an oncoming car head-on, but what wasn’t emphasised was just HOW far ahead we need to see.

Let’s do a few quick sums. Let’s assume the truck is travelling at 45 mph. That’s 20 metres per second. Let’s assume we pass the truck at 60 mph – we’re thus travelling 15 mph faster than the truck (6.7 m/s). Assuming a typical HGV (16.5 metres long), it’ll take us approximately 2.5 seconds to travel from front to rear. In that time – whilst we are riding at 60 mph or 27 m/s remember – we’ve travelled no less than 67.5 metres.

But of course, we have to move out and move back again. The total distance travelled during the entire manoeuvre is not going to be less than three times 67.5 metres, so to accelerate, pass and tuck back again, we’re looking at a minimum total distance of around 200 metres.

Except we need treble this distance.

Why? What about the effect on other road users when we pop out from behind a truck and the oncoming driver suddenly sees us? Assuming the car is coming the other way at the same speed we’re making the pass and we want to move out, make the pass, then manoeuvre back with a minimum MARGIN FOR ERROR between us, we actually need to COMPLETE the overtake in around one-third of the total “distance we can see to be clear”. So the minimum distance we actually need FROM THE MOMENT WE COMMIT is AT LEAST 600 metres – that’s over one-third of a mile. And we’re now mentally juggling with speeds and distances at which the human brain struggles to make accurate computations.

Of course, to make up for the lack of forward view, the temptation is to nail it. But the faster we attempt to make the pass, the more difficult it is to bail out when it starts going wrong.

My take on this is not to hurry into such an overtake. We definitely shouldn’t underestimate the the difficulties of seeing far enough ahead and the blind areas. Technical ability is NOT a substitute for sound judgement. In practice, I’d suggest only the shallowest left hand bends with the very best views allow a reasonably risk-free overtake past the slowest-moving vehicles, which brings us full-circle to whether an overtake is ‘need’ or ‘nice’.

What was left pretty much unsaid was that a better opportunity will probably come along in a minute. I intensely dislike this ‘take every available opportunity’ approach to riding. It may be appropriate to police riding, but I doubt the validity for civvie riding, even at ‘advanced’ level.

Most of all, I was concerned at its publication in a magazine, where Andy had no control over the riders reading the article. It’s an issue I’m very aware of when writing my own riding tips of my own, and even when delivering my own Survival Skills advanced motorcycle training courses. It’s why each tip tends to have exhaustive discussions of the risks as well as an explanation of benefits.

Statistics show that around half of out-of-town fatalities result from overtakes that go wrong, so to my mind we should be eliminating the technically-tricky ones with the highest potential for going wrong. I’m certainly not going to say I’ve never overtaken in a left-hander but I can definitely say there have been a few times I wished I hadn’t bothered.

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61. Before you overtake, do you…?

The central lesson — never assume left-hand junctions are clear when overtaking — is often overlooked, even by experienced motorcyclists. The scenarios you describe illustrate a classic cognitive trap: tunnel vision on the manoeuvre past the target vehicle while failing to account for other hazards.

Before you overtake, do you…?

…check for junctions on the left?

Whenever I’m giving one of my Survival Skills presentations about avoiding overtaking collisions, it takes a few minutes to work through all the places we have to look out for. Most riders are aware of the hazards posed by junctions and other openings to the right, where the vehicle we’re overtaking might turn right, or another in the side turning might emerge from. But way down the list is the fact that a junction or driveway on the left is just as much of a hazard. Why?

Here’s what often happens. We see a vehicle ahead slow, and indicate left. “Good, that’ll make it easier to pass” we think. And so we do all our other checks, swing wide and commit to the pass.

But as always with the Survival Skills approach to advanced riding, let’s not assume things will go right, but think about what might go wrong.

What if the driver swings out to the right to make the turn easy? It’s highly likely if the vehicle we’re trying to pass is an articulated lorry or a bus, but cars do it too, and not always because the driver’s being lazy, as we’re all too quick to assume. The manoeuvre might be very awkward, maybe because the entrance is narrow or because it turns right back on itself.

What if there’s a second vehicle actually in the side turning waiting to turn right? What’s the driver of that vehicle likely to do as he sees the approaching car slowing with the left indicator on? There’s a significant risk he will pull out, straight into our path and now we’re set up for a head-on collision. Why does the driver go? Because he’s seen the same as us, that there’s nothing coming from his left (that’s why we’re overtaking), but he also thinks it’s clear from his right, because of our position. Wide out to the right, we’re blindsided by the car we’re moving out to pass. We might well be able to see over the roof of the slowing car, but from where the driver is sat, all that’s likely to be visible is the top of our helmet.

Or maybe that second vehicle plans on turning left. Exactly the same line-of-sight problem applies, only this time the driver pulls out and turns in the same direction we’re headed. And maybe that takes away the gap we were planning on moving back into before encountering oncoming traffic.

So even if we back out of the overtake, what if the driver turning left cannot complete the turn? What if he’s turning into a single track road and there’s a vehicle coming the other way? Will the turning vehicle have to stop? And can we stop before we run into the back of it? A surprising number of crashes at junctions on fast roads happen when motorcycles collide with the back of vehicles that have slowed or stopped to make a turn.

And of course, there may be more than one vehicle involved. We may look at a pair of cars travelling relatively slowly, and decide we can hop into the gap between them. And then we realise the leading vehicle is slowing to turning left (or right). What will the vehicle we are passing do? The chances are the driver will be braking but aiming to slow or halt just behind the turning vehicle, bunching up close together. Where is our ‘out’ from the overtake now? It’s probably vanished.

All these scenarios we should be able to spot developing, even if we haven’t spotted where the vehicle will turn. We should see slowing vehicles, brake lights and probably indicators. We should be able to put two and two together and figure out what’s happening.

But there’s a final Worst Case Scenario which is not nearly so easy to detect. And that’s when the vehicle we’re about to overtake is NOT turning left but going straight on, but there’s also a second vehicle waiting in the junction ahead, intending to turn right. Here’s what happens. The driver looks left, sees the road is clear (our ahead – which is why we’re about to overtake too), and pulls out across the vehicle we’re just moving out to pass, straight into our path. The problem is that the emerging car doesn’t need a big gap – the driver just needs enough space to get across the centre line and into the other lane.

That led to one of the very few genuine brown trouser moments I’ve had on a training course. The trainee set up an overtake past an HGV well. He’s spotted we were about to exit a left-hand bend onto a long clear straight, moved wide to take a final check ahead, then started to accelerate…

…just as a Ferrari pulled out from the left, right in front of the truck and nailed it towards him. Fortunately, he wasn’t totally committed and was able to hit the brakes and bail out of the overtake. But it was a scary moment.

Of course, it’s not always easy to spot junctions and entrances on the left, but sometimes it’s a simple failure of observation. One of the problems with overtaking is that it’s such a complex speed / distance computation that we can get fixated on whether the road ahead is clear, and totally forget the job of scanning laterally for hazards. I’ve made this mistake myself, most recently on a BikeSafe assessment – I only spotted the entranceway after moving wide.

But very often, the most dangerous locations are flagged up good and early for us, but we still miss the warnings; a hazard line, triangular warning signs, road direction signs, finger posts, traffic islands and cross-hatched right-turn refuges, white paint in the throat of the junction, dropped kerbs, openings in hedges, gaps in lines of parked cars, even the roof of a cottage visible over the hedge – it WILL have a drive.

[A few days after I originally wrote this article, I added the following first-hand experience.]

Well… deja vu moment or what…

Having written this, there I was, zipping down a nice bit of road, slower car ahead, good straight coming up just around the next right-hand corner… I open up the view, it’s clear… but…

I catch a glimpse of something silver to the left just as I move out to start the pass… and abort…

Just as well, because right in front of the car I was about to pass, out pulls a driver in a powerful Mercedes from a well-hedged driveway. He turns right and accelerates hard into what would have been my path had I continued with the manoeuvre.

I’m glad I was out of the way!

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54. Overtaking – Questions and Answers

Nothing’s changed about overtaking. The central thesis — that overtaking is a risk management problem, not a technical skill exercise — aligns closely with modern advanced riding doctrine and collision analysis. Arguably, the risks surrounding overtaking have not diminished. Traffic density has increased, vehicles are quicker, and the fundamental problem remains unchanged: overtaking is one of the few manoeuvres where we commit ourselves to a manoeuvre which relies on predictable behaviour of other road users, all at high relative speeds. Modern motorcycles may accelerate harder and stop better, but so do cars either ahead of us or coming the other way. If anything, improved motorcycle performance is a trap into thinking it makes overtaking “easier” but actually making poor decisions unfold faster. The principles that follow are therefore not dated cautions, but enduring risk-management tools for one of riding’s highest-consequence manoeuvres.

Overtaking – Questions and Answers

I originally put this particular article together for two reasons. It was partly because of the volume of emails directed to my old ‘Doctor’s Surgery’ page, and an even larger number of questions posted on the bike forum I was moderating. And it was partly because of the crash statistics and the shocking rate of fatalities resulting from overtaking errors. Just one study from Cheshire (see ‘Accident Statistics – dispelling some myths’) showed that just under 10% of all crashes in the study resulted from overtaking errors, including overtaking a car that turned right and head-on collisions. As I wrote at the time I penned the original, that particular study is a few years old now, but from what I can see, nothing much has changed. Give riders a chance to overtake, and a significant proportion of us still manage to get it wrong – badly. So rather than write yet another “here’s the right way to overtake”, let’s look at the cautions we should build into our planning; cautions to be applied whether we’re new to biking or experienced.

There are two kinds of overtaking crash. Those made by riders who don’t understand how to perform an overtake in the first place – I was certainly in that category for my first few years of riding and was lucky to survive some serious errors. But there are a second kind too – what I’ve come to realise over the years is that experienced riders, and especially those with a post-test riding qualification, become rather blase about the risks of overtaking. The more we carry out the overtaking manoeuvre, the more it becomes routine. Riders who started with cautious overtakes and wide margins for error begin to get increasingly confident. And then they begin to cut back on those margins.

Whever the source of the error, the trouble is that when we get an overtake badly wrong there’s a fair chance it’ll be both the first, the last and the ONLY time it goes badly wrong – the consequences are often fatal. When overtaking goes wrong, we may not get a chance to learn from our mistake.

Q What are the legal aspects of overtaking?

A Off to the Highway Code. All overtaking must be made to the RIGHT or offside of the vehicle except:

  • when the driver in front is turning right and there is sufficient room, it is safe and legal to overtake to the left

  • when the rider is turning left and there is sufficient room to do so

  • in one way streets where traffic in the right hand lane(s) is travelling slower

  • in slow moving traffic where traffic is moving slower in the outside lane, provided the rider does not change lanes to gain advantage

YOU MUST NOT OVERTAKE :

  • where it would mean crossing double or single solid white lines. (The exception to this rule is when it’s safe to pass an obstruction such as a road maintenance vehicle, a cyclist or a horse. They must be either stationary or travelling at less than 10mph)

  • within the zigzag area on approach to a pedestrian crossing (i)

  • where signs indicate a prohibition

i) The actual traffic regulation is that you must not pass the car nearest the crossing within the zigzag markings – so you could legally filter up next to it, but not overtake until clear of the crossing.

YOU SHOULD NOT OVERTAKE where forward vision is restricted to such an extent that there is insufficient room to complete the manoeuvre in the area visible, such as on the approach to:

  • a corner or bend

  • dead ground

  • a brow of a hill or bridge

Q I often see bikes overtaking and squeezing by cars just inside a solid line on the rider’s side. Is that legal?

A The law says that no part of the bike (and that includes your body and your panniers – likely to be the widest part of your machine) should cross the solid white line. Just keeping the wheels inside isn’t enough. And crossing it, no matter how tempting, is illegal – points and a fine. But, technically, if there is room then it is legal to pass inside the solid line.

However… drivers will NOT expect to be overtaken on a road with a solid line, will not be expecting it and may react aggressively as most road users think a solid line means no overtaking.

Q What about cross-hatched areas?

A If there are no legal restrictions, there are no specific rules to say no. With cross-hatched areas bounded by a broken line, the problem is a matter of interpretation of the law, which says we can enter if “safe and necessary to do so”. We can – and I have – argued what constitutes ‘necessary’ many times. The problem is that your interpretation of necessary as “necessary to get ahead of a slower vehicle” may not be a non-biking magistrate’s interpretation. Cross-hatched areas are there to create empty space by keeping traffic flows apart, often to protect vehicles turning right, on bends where there is a lot of heavy traffic, or perhaps where lanes are about to diverge or merge together; they are not handy motorcycle overtaking lanes. Using them to ‘make progress’ may not be illegal per se, but it could be risky. I will use them, but I’ll have a good look to try to work out why they are there before I do.

Q OK, so how about up the middle of wide roads with a broken line? Can I pass between lanes of traffic where the road is wide enough? That’s legal, surely?

Legal perhaps, but no-one expects to encounter a bike overtaking down the middle of opposing streams of traffic. What if someone ahead moves out for a better view ahead? What if an oncoming driver reacts aggressively? What if we meet someone doing the same thing from the opposite direction? Although they’ve become very rare, three-lane roads which allowed overtaking from opposite directions were notorious for head-on collisions.

Q OK, so if I avoid those traps, all I have to worry about when overtaking is if it is safe and legal?

A Ask yourself: why you are overtaking? Is there any point in overtaking one vehicle in a long queue on a twisty road where you know there are no other overtakes possible for miles? Is there any point in overtaking just before a roundabout? Is there any point overtaking a car travelling at much the same speed as you? Is there any point making a difficult overtake on a single carriageway when there is a sign saying “DUAL CARRIAGEWAY 1 MILE”?

Q Of course – I make more progress. Isn’t that good?

A ‘Making progress’ has become a byword for ‘advanced motorcyclist’. After a decade and a half of working as a courier, I knew a little about getting from A to B without hanging around too much. Even so, when I put myself through the IAM system back in the late 90s, I rather surprised to be pulled up on an observed ride by my observer for failing to overtake a pickup truck travelling at around 40 in a 60 limit on a dead straight road, since we were just approaching a short stretch of 30 limit through a village, and I could see the national limit resumed on the other side. The conversation that followed was along these lines:

Obs – “you had an opportunity to make a safe pass before the village”
Me – “but what happened to the speed limit 300m past the point I would have completed the overtake?”
Obs – “It went from 60 to a 30”
Me – “but how long did it last? You could see the national limit sign at the other end of the village.”
Obs – “yes, but you could have made a safe overtake before the village.”
Me – “did you notice if the pickup slowed down for the speed limit?”
Obs – “No it didn’t.”

Now, about this point our planning diverged. Mine was based on the reasonable assumption that a driver ambling along a dead straight bit of 60 limit at 40 would probably continue ambling along at 40 in the dead straight bit of 30 limit. His was based on the letter of the law.

Me – “So, I would have overtaken the truck, then slowed for the limit, only to have it stuck to my number plate for the next half mile”.
Obs – “That’s the driver’s problem, not yours.”

I disagreed then and I disagree now. It’s very much my problem. By overtaking, I’ve converted a hazard that was ahead of me, where I can see it easily and can choose my own following distance, into one that’s behind me where I cannot control the gap and one which I can only see in the mirrors. I actually lose control of the situation.

Me – “did I lose the opportunity to make any useful progress?”
Obs – “yes, you could have overtaken before the village.”

Once again, I disagree. The gain was one vehicle on a lightly-trafficked road. Given the short stretch of 30 limit, it was perfectly reasonable to defer the overtake until I was out the other side, and back in the national limit.

So, here’s the first question we ask, and it’s not “is it safe?”. It’s “is it sensible and does it make USEFUL progress?” Getting one vehicle further up the road is neither here nor there, and having to slow down right in front of the vehicle we’ve just passed isn’t sensible.

And here’s the kicker. Overtaking is ALWAYS risky. So if we can defer a riskier manoeuvre – like that overtake on a single carriageway – until there’s less risk on the dual carriageway, that has to be a good thing.

Q Surely if an overtake is done properly, there’s no risk?

A Years ago, an ex-police instructor told me quite categorically that “done well, an overtake is perfectly safe”. He was wrong. As a moment’s thought would have told him, we can NEVER completely eliminate risk. From the moment we ride away from the kerb, there are always things that can go wrong and so our job is risk management. The biggest problem with overtaking is that we’re not facing what the DVSA have called a ‘static hazard’. A bend is a static hazard. The bend cannot change its mind about which way it’s going – what we see is what we’re going to get, and so long as our observation skills and ridiing technique are reasonably proficient, we should get round it. The only person who can get it wrong is the rider.

But an overtake involves at least one other human, quite possibly several humans. And however carefully we plan ahead, we CANNOT control what another human does. And if there’s one thing we should have learned almost as soon as we hit the road, it’s that humans make mistakes. Mid-overtake, however carefully we plan ahead, we’re relying on other drivers to do what we expected them to do. It’s when they behave in a way we were NOT expecting that things go wrong.

Q What are the big dangers whilst overtaking?

A Apart from making such a foul-up of the overtake that we hit a car coming the other way, the biggest dangers are colliding with the vehicle we’re passing as it pulls out itself to overtake, hitting a car as it turns right, being hit by a car emerging from the right, or running into a car emerging from the left and turning into our path!

Q But no-one can miss seeing a car coming towards them!

A Sometimes riders don’t miss the oncoming vehicle, but deliberately choose to pull out into its path. What we have to look at is not just the distance we need to get past a slower vehicle, but to allow AT LEAST the same distance ahead to deal with an oncoming vehicle appearing just as we commit to the overtake. Think about it.

The big problem is that our ability to judge the speed and distance of oncoming vehicles is sketchy at best at the kind of speeds and distances we need for overtakes on the open road. And the quicker the traffic we’re passing, the easier it is to misjudge the gap ahead. Don’t rely on just one glance to judge speed and distance – it’s easy to miss the Ferrari being driven enthusiastically and closing from the other direction at high speed. That’ll fill the gap we were planning on using. We’d better not be in it.

But sometimes we cannot see the oncoming vehicle when we commit to overtaking, because we’re approaching a blind corner or maybe a blind crest. Legally, we have to be back to our side of the road where the line on our side turns solid, so most riders aim to return to the nearside as they pass the two ‘toeing-in’ arrows. But what if that Ferrari appears around the bend going like the clappers? That point-of-return will be far too late. So we need to build in a much bigger margin – essentially, if we cannot return to the left WELL BEFORE the arrows, we really shouldn’t commit ourselves. Likewise, we shouldn’t be cutting back in right in front of the vehicle we’ve just past. A ‘well-judged’ overtake that returns just before the solid line is actually an overtake with no margin for error. And with no margin, they have a habit of going wrong.

The final reason for hitting something head-on is because we attempt a multi-vehicle pass, aiming for a gap somewhere ahead, and the gap closes leaving us hung out to dry. Firstly, the old pilot’s adage – never take-off without knowing where to land. We need to be absolutely certain of a gap to return to on the nearside. I’m highly cautious overtaking towards oncoming traffic, even when there appears to be a gap, because it may close up. I’ve had drivers try to help me out by braking just as I’m planning on pulling back behind them, and I’ve also been caught out passing vehicles that are themselves catching a slower-moving HGV. So we need to be really sure that the gap will still be there when we need it. Really, we should have TWO gaps to aim for – our intended landing zone and a back-up. And of course, if the car we’re intending to pull in behind suddenly brakes to ‘help out’, it’s possible to run into the back of it. That’s a sign the landing zone was too short!

Q But what about the collision with the car turning right? If I’m overtaking and someone turns right, it’s not my fault is it? He’s supposed to check his mirror, isn’t he?

A Unfortunately, riders think they have a ‘right to overtake’ and that it’s the driver’s responsibility to keep them safe. Motorcycle News went as far as putting a “Think bike before turning right” sticker on an issue years back, telling riders to put them on petrol pumps. I’m not even going to go into all the reasons drivers miss bikes in the mirrors. I’m simply going to ask you, if a car COULD turn right, what on earth is the biker doing overtaking just there?

That campaign was another excuse for riders not thinking for themselves. On a quiet bit of road, take a look at all the places a vehicle COULD turn right – side turnings, access roads, petrol stations… they’re all obvious. What about driveways? Is it always easy to see the drive of a cottage on a country road? Where can a tractor turn right? Anywhere it likes. Knowing how difficult some of these places are to spot detunes me compared with less-cautious riders.

Because it’s hard to spot a lot of the places where a vehicle COULD turn, we need to be really on the ball. We can watch the vehicle itself for clues. If it’s just slowed down, that’s not an invitation to overtake, but a warning sign. Watch the driver to see where they’re looking – if it’s not ahead, it could be where they are about to turn. We need to be particularly careful when we’ve just caught a slower vehicle up, particularly on a twisty road or if we’ve just overtaken from behind – the driver may not have seen us. If we do decide to pass, there’s the horn? A short note just before we fully commit will warn him we’re are there!

Q So if I’m sure the driver won’t turn right, I’m safe to overtake, right?

A Wrong. What goes in must come out. If a vehicle can turn right, another can pull out. Most of us – bikers included – look right before turning out to the left. Expecting a motorcycle on the wrong side of the centre line is not in most road users’ minds when they prepare to emerge. Watch out for lay-bys too – drivers are usually searching for traffic in their mirrors.

Q OK, so I’ll take care to look for junctions on the right, but what’s the problem overtaking a car turning left?

A Simple. Here’s one issue. The slowing vehicle swings out wide to make the turn easy and sideswipes the bike into the undergrowth. Surprisingly common. Another is that a second vehicle pulls out ahead of us because our bike is in the blind spot behind the turning vehicle, and the driver’s not expecting anything to be overtaking. If the driver turns right, they’ll be looking left too, and we’ll have a head-on. If the driver turns left, that may be the gap we were planning on moving back into. And of course, the driver may cancel the signal and carry on, hanging us out to dry on the wrong side of the centre line.

And here’s one that nearly caught me out as a courier. I went to pass a car that was turning left on a wide road, but the driver flashed another driver of a car that was waiting to turn right in the same road, intending for him to cross first into the side road. The second driver started to turn, then spotted me bearing down on him and stopped! The road ahead of me was now almost completely blocked. Fortunately I’d long since learned to keep the speed down when overtaking, and was able to stop.

Q So, I’ve finally decided it’s safe to pass – with my powerful bike I should be able to get past as quickly as possible, right?

A Wrong. The performance of modern bikes is a trap, not an advantage, partly because modern cars and trucks are a lot quicker too and partly because the straights on our roads haven’t got any longer. And once we’ve gained speed, we have to lose it again. Especially when we’re passing more than one vehicle, if we simply aim to pass “as quickly as possible” (and I winced when I heard another instructor say that) sooner rather than later we’ll end up regretting all that speed as things don’t go as we expected ahead. It may be tempting to blast past a line of slower vehicles, but we need to treat each individually as a separate overtake and be able to bail out at each stage – if we’re thinking of overtaking, what’s to stop one of those drivers doing exactly the same? So if the only way to pull off the overtake is in one hit at high speed, then don’t.

Q So what’s so risky about overtaking on dual carriageways?

A One of the biggest dangers are junctions where vehicles can turn through the central reservation. These junctions are relatively rare (most have been blocked up) but the crash risk is high. Even when there is no crossing the lanes, slip roads are often very short with emerging drivers struggling to gain speed to match the traffic bearing down. The result can be hard braking or sudden lane changes ahead. In either case, I usually defer overtaking till I’m clear of the junction, unless I can see that the junction’s clear.

Most of the other issues are down to speed differentials. Slow-moving vehicles including cycles and tractors are allowed on dual carriageways and we can come up on them quickly, so we need to look and plan well ahead so we can move out in good time. If we’re already passing slower traffic, look for cars in the inside lane catching HGVs that will probably want to pull out to overtake themselves. Don’t hover alongside in mirror blindspots and don’t approach at excessive speed – you may need to slow down if they pull out. suddenly in front of you, so don’t sit in their blind spots. On three lane stretches, watch out for someone moving from the inside lane as we move back into the middle lane from the outside lane. A signal helps enormously.

And before we move out to make a pass, a series of mirror checks is best followed by a final blind spot shoulder check. However good our mirror checks, there’s always the risk of finding a vehicle lurking right in the OUR blind spot.

Q So I just sit behind the vehicle ahead and wait for a big gap.

A Sort of. The simplest way to overtake is if we can simply move out wide early to get a view past the slower vehicle – if the road ahead looks clear, we simply carry on and our speed differential carries us past the slower vehicle. And if it’s not clear, we simply move back in, then match speed.

But once we have to wait for a gap, then our first decision is how far behind the slower vehicle we should ride. If you’ve read ‘Motorcycle Roadcraft’ (or taken Roadcraft-based training) you’ve probably heard of the ‘following’ and ‘overtaking’ positions.

Essentially, the ‘following’ position is the normal distance behind the vehicle ahead, which allows us to stop if the vehicle ahead comes to an unexpected halt. That’s where we should be when there’s no prospect of overtaking. But if we think we may have an opportunity to pass, then it’s suggested we move up into a much closer ‘overtaking’ position from where we make the final Go/Stay decision.

Now, the big problem is that we’ve compromised our following distance. In theory, we only move up when we think we might be able to pass and if it turns out we can’t, we should drop back again and reinstate a safe distance. On a lightly-trafficked road, we should be able to make the overtake without too much delay and just a couple of forwards / backwards iterations, and that was likely the case on most roads when Roadcraft was first written to deal with 50s and 60s traffic.

Unfortunately, real life and heavy 21st century traffic intrudes on the theory.

The first observation I’ll make (and one that I have never heard anyone else explicitly admit) is that the only reason we NEED to use the closer ‘overtaking’ position is because we’re looking for to overtake in less distance – either a shorter straight between bends, or a smaller gap between oncoming vehicles. That restricted distance is why we need to be closer up in the first place. If that weren’t the case, we could overtake from the more distant position.

The second issue (also rarely mentioned) is that we’re often being followed by other vehicles. The drivers will of course maintain THEIR OWN following distance behind us. As we move up, they stay the same distance behind us. So when we try to drop back, we drop back into THEIR following space. And they are now too close behind. Put that together with a busy 21st century road and this moving up / dropping back means we’re ping-ponging back and forth from the tailgate of the car ahead to the bonnet of the car behind. If we make this forwards/backwards movement too exaggerated or too often, it can and will confuse and irritate the driver ahead (who is watching you in the mirrors) and the driver behind (who wonders why you can’t ride at a constant speed).

On a busy road, the temptation is to sit permanently in the close-up overtaking position waiting for the next opportunity because we don’t have so far to travel, but the lack of following distance not only increases the risk if the car ahead slows suddenly, it actually interferes with our observation – if we’re worried about running into the back of the car, then that’s what we focus on – and we end up watching its brake lights rather than the road ahead or even our mirrors. Riders who say “I don’t have time to take my eyes of the road and make a shoulder check before overtaking” are admitting they’re too close. We also have to move out first THEN accelerate if we’re too close behind – overtakes often become ‘swoops’ ending with excessive speed making it difficult to pull promptly back to the left.

You might read something like “moving up to the overtaking position is a difficult skill to learn – timing it right requires excellent observation and planning and anticipation too”. I actually wrote that in the previous version of this article, but being totally honest, this forwards / backwards business quickly becomes exhausting. If it was needed for one overtake, the chances are it’ll be needed for the next… and the next… and so on. And my old courier instinct to make life simple kicks in. If overtakes are that tricky, I probably won’t bother – at least, not till a simple opportunity comes along and I am pretty sure I DO will have an opportunity to pass. I may miss a few overtakes, but I am reducing my exposure to risk significantly.

Q So how do YOU plan an overtake from the following position?

A Typically, I’ll be looking for a straight after a right-hand bend where my following position behind the vehicle ahead will actually give me a good, clear view of both sides of the road – remember, I’m not just looking to see if something is coming the other way, but searching for junctions ahead which could be on either side of the road. If clear, I’ll turn from the final part of the corner straight onto the other side of the road and accelerate whilst the vehicle I’m passing is just exiting the curve. This means getting my rear observations and gear changing done in advance. Done right, the acceleration from the following position to the overtaking position and into the overtake is one smooth movement. We shouldn’t have to accelerate hard or brake hard to dip back in.

Q I find that by the time I’ve moved up to the following position to the overtaking position, the opportunity has gone

A This is why forward planning is so important.

Q I get impatient waiting for cars to overtake. I signalled, so why do they always pull out in front of me just as I want to go?

A Remember other vehicles (most cars and all trucks) have much less acceleration than we do, and will need a much bigger gap to pass, so as soon as such a gap appears it’s a good idea to be ready for the driver to go for the overtake. The average car driver has a lot less practice at overtaking, and will be focusing all his / her attention on the road ahead, so don’t expect your signal to be spotted. And if the car ahead has already signalled, don’t attempt to bully your way through by accelerating more rapidly. Collisions with vehicles ahead moving out to pass out are not uncommon, so be cautious.

Drivers are far more likely to make a mistake and do something dangerous for both of you if you are right on the back bumper. In particular do not harass learner drivers. In any case, hanging back and giving the driver ahead ‘first go’ is polite – dropping back makes it clear that we’re not intending to pass there and then, and that may help the driver ahead make a prompt decision. We may be able to follow through in the same gap, or even pass the overtaking car a moment later. And if the driver does have second thoughts and decide not to use the big gap after all, we can probably still pass ourselves – don’t forget rear observations in case someone behind has seen the big gap, and be ready with a horn warning in case of a last-second change-of-mind by the driver ahead.

Q On my RoSPA test, the things I was marked down for were:
1) changing gear mid overtake
2) following position too aggressive
3) overtook next to a left hand junction

A Hopefully by now you’ll have seen that because most overtaking takes place in a brief window of opportunity, we have to be absolutely prepared to go when that opportunity arises. If we are having to change gear mid-overtake, we clearly weren’t in the right gear to start with, and so we weren’t planning far enough ahead. We may have got away with it on that occasion, but on another overtake which doesn’t turn out as we might rue that missed acceleration. And we’ve already seen the problems of sitting too close to a slower vehicle, and the risks arising from overtaking near a junction.

Q So is any overtake necessary?

A If not overtaking means becoming part of a mobile road block, then the answer is a guarded yes. For example, if we cannot overtake a slow-moving tractor, then we’re adding the the hazard it’s creating, because other drivers will now have to overtake two vehicles, rather than just the tractor. And that puts us at additional risk. But once we are riding along in the general flow, then overtakes are ‘nice’ rather than ‘necessary’.

Q Anything else?

A However quick you are, there will be someone quicker. Mirrors and blind spot checks are essential. Riders DO get taken out by vehicles they haven’t seen catching them from behind. And if you’ve not got time for a blind spot check? You’re rushing the overtake.

Q So what’s a good system for overtaking?

A If we want to make a safe overtake, it’s all about doing it methodically. SEARCH, EVALUATE, EXECUTE. There are plenty of guides to safe [sic] overtaking out there, so this article focuses on understanding the risks. Here are four simple rules to remember:

ONE – just because you COULD, doesn’t mean you SHOULD. If our attitude is “if I didn’t overtake I might as well be in a car” then it’s the wrong attitude. Although ‘progress’ is often talked about as the result of advanced training, what we really should be doing is performing better risk assessments and making better risk management decisions.

TWO – overtaking is NICE, rarely NECESSARY. We should be looking at overtaking as a high risk activity, not somewhere to show off our technical skill. Skills should be used to build margins for error by asking “how could this go wrong?”

THREE – if we’re thinking of an overtake, then so is someone else. And that someone might be ahead or behind. We need to be able to change our plan on an instant.

FOUR – if we don’t KNOW, we don’t GO! A lot of overtakes that go wrong fail because the rider’s taken a chance. And it didn’t work out.

Q Aren’t we being too cautious? Everyone knows bikes overtake cars.

A But bikes are also ‘out of sight, out of mind’. Because we can use smaller gaps, most drivers won’t be considering an overtake, so the possibility that a bike will be passing won’t occur to them – we have to get into the habit of doing the other driver’s thinking for them.

Riding a bike is great fun, but there are few manoeuvres where speeds of vehicles are so high and the risks so high. It’s no consolation that the words on our tombstone read “I had right of way”.

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40. Overtaking – don’t get caught up with a vehicle turning right

The fundamental error — overtaking without accounting for a right turn — is still one of the most common and most avoidable causes of serious and fatal motorcycle collisions. Increasing numbers of damaged, hidden or missing signs, near-universal use of sat-nav, many more delivery vehicles turning unpredictably, ever-more erratic use of signals; no rider-aid system can detect a driver’s intention to turn across our path. The principle here is therefore unchanged: if there is anywhere a vehicle could turn right, it should be assumed that sooner or later it will. There’s no point blaming the driver after the event. It’s all about anticipating what vehicles are likely to do. Then staying out of trouble.

Overtaking – don’t get caught up with a vehicle turning right

As I’ve mentioned before, overtaking is never ‘safe’ and in fact, a quick look at the accident statistics reveals just how often motorcyclists get overtaking wrong. Passing another vehicle throws up a whole range of potential errors from misjudging speed and distance (and thus time to collision) to observation failures. Not least, we’re always relying on the driver we’re passing to do what we expect. Essentially we’re always taking a calculated risk, so we should be making the pass in such a way as to minimise the chance of something going wrong. But some riders make one of the mistakes that also one of the easiest to avoid; don’t overtake where there is a chance the vehicle we’re planning on passing might turn right!

There’s a slower vehicle we want to pass. But before we commit to the overtake, it’s essential to engage our brain before we engage warp drive.

Let’s start with the ‘look and feel’ of the situation. The vehicle ahead is moving rather slower than we’d expect. Does that mean it’s an easy target for an overtake? Or should it set our Spidy Senses tingling that something’s not quite right. Why might a vehicle be slower than us? It could simply be that the driver’s not in so much of a rush. Or it could mean that the vehicle’s about to make a manoeuvre.

Some years ago, we had a long debate on a forum after an experienced rider tailed a Landrover into a right-hand bend, with the Landie driver on the brakes all the way round. The rider knew the road, and that there was a straight after the bend, so he set up his position ready to overtake as soon as his view of the road ahead opened up. As it did, he cut to the other lane and started to accelerate…

…just as the Landrover continued to steer right, into a farm track he’d never noticed before.

The rider just avoided a collision.

There followed the usual debate about the failure of the Landrover driver to use mirrors or signals. But ultimately, it’s our own responsibility to ask the question “What if…?” and to come up with the right answer. If there IS a place a vehicle CAN turn right, then sooner or later it WILL turn right.

And of course, what was forgotten in all the righteous indignation about the driver’s failings was that “what goes in, must come out”. The rider could have set up the same overtake behind another car, and pulled straight into the path of the Landrover turning right OUT of that farm track.

So it’s not just the road ahead we need to ensure is clear, we need to scan for places a vehicle could turn in.

We need to look for side roads, access roads to car parks or delivery bays, driveways, farm tracks… and more besides. These entrances are often tough to spot. A side turning can be hidden by anything from a hedgerow to a parked van. It was a parked furniture removals lorry that caught me out years ago. It was parked on the grass, so given the long straight ahead, an overtake past a slower car seemed perfectly reasonable. Only at the last moment did I spot the car pulling out from the side turning – the driver hadn’t seen either of us approaching thanks to the same van. Cominig back down the road the other way an hour or so later, I noticed the clue that would have warned me – the finger post pointing into that side road.

There are plenty of side turnings on rural roads, but also plenty of cottages, and each cottage has a driveway. They’re often totally blind, concealed behind a neatly-trimmed hedge. The driver can’t see out, and we can’t see his car either. But there are usually plenty of other clues; the hedge is neatly-trimmed, perhaps with a sliver of mown grass. We might see flowers, a wheelie bin, and even the mirror on the opposite side of the road which the driver uses to compensate for his lack of view. As the No Surprise? No Accident Rhyming Reminder has it, “GAPS=TRAPS”.

In town or country, it’s tempting to overtake slow-moving delivery vans. But pause for a moment. What do delivery vans do? They deliver. If the driver is constantly slowing down then speeding up again, what’s happening? Do you think it might be that he’s trying to spot his delivery address? Is it a good idea to overtake as he slows down? Or should we be thinking about hanging back and waiting for him or her to find the building they’re searching for? What if the van is simply driving slowly? Could the driver be in a strange town and checking the GPS or route signs to find his way? Is it a good place to nip past? If it’s a hire van, and it’s come from a different part of the country, that’s more than likely. Even if we’re looking at a car and thinking that there’s no obvious reason for hesitant driving, it could simply be an inexperienced driver at the wheel. Or maybe it’s a foreign visitor in a hire car, and not used to driving on our side of the road.

If we do decide we’re going to overtake, try to give the driver chance to see us in the mirror. Once committed, pass decisively but slowly enough to be able to take avoiding action. And DON’T BE AFRAID TO SOUND THE HORN – it’s what its there for. If the driver hasn’t seen us coming, the horn will hopefully make him think twice before swinging across the road and into our path.

But don’t give in to impatience. It’s easy to do that, and then we get taken out by a driver turning right into an entrance we didn’t see. We have to be pretty darn certain there’s no way the driver could turn right before passing. There’s a Rhyming Reminder rule for that too – “if you don’t KNOW, you don’t GO”.

Overtake cautiously out there!