vieuxtigre wrote:I feel compelled to add my 2 penceworth on this one. I have a copy of Car magazine of 7 years ago in which a journalist praised the qualities of the M5 he'd been driving, particularly how easy it made overtaking, but then went on to comment on how increasingly difficult it was to overtake due to the adverse reactions of other drivers. He made 2 main points:-
1. How the type of car makes a lot of difference to people's reaction. Audi, BMW, Porsche seem the worst. Anything classic, exotic or plain unusual seems to provoke less opposition and more genuine interest. The reactions I got from other motorists when driving a Citroen 2CV and a Ferrari 328 seem to confirm this. In the former everyone would pull out in front of you as if you weren't there. In the latter I always seemed to drive on much clearer roads. Couldn't work out how much this was due to the times and places I drive the respective cars. The 2CV was everyday transport at the time, the Ferrari wasn't.
2. The general situation and driver mentality. Horse makes some very relevant comments here with which I heartily concur. The above-mentioned journalist referred to a driving course he'd done with a bloke called John Lyon who prophesied a general future dystopia. This was based on the dumbing-down of drivers' attitudes to a sort of mindless sheep-like follow-my-leader due to the combination of lower speed limits, eco stuff and negative messages about speed promulgated by the authorities, plus much modern road design and electronic surveillance/enforcement. I took it with a pinch of salt when Lyon told me this several decades ago but I now reckon he was dead right. It's happened.
That said, things seem to improve the further you go away from the south-east and at less busy times of day. But I agree there are now many roads and many times when it's not really viable to consider overtaking and this will only increase as the roads get even more crowded and the authorities find ever more reasons to reduce speed limits. Of course, all overtakes should be done smoothly, safely and with a minimum of fuss so as to minimise any possibility of adverse reaction from other road users. The judgement of when, where and whether to overtake is a skill we all need to maintain and develop as advanced drivers.
There are good points there, but I'd be hesitant about invoking John Lyon: When I did my half-day HPC intro with him in about '92, he firstly gave me some very good pointers that helped my driving hugely and, secondly, was utterly psychotic about other road users, to the point where he very nearly ended up walking thirty miles home - he was particularly arsey about cyclists, expressing the belief that, whenever a car came up behind them on a narrow road, they should immediately pull in, stop and let the motor vehicle past. Not a good advert for progressive driving. Put me off the HPC for years, that did. What I find now is that principled and pragmatic driver training is now being subsumed by that 'programmed sheep' mentality you describe - where organisations like RoSPA and IAM are, at one level, promoting the 'thinking' rider or driver and, at another, micro-managing and being utterly prescriptive about what can and cannot be taught, for no other reasons than dribbling dogma and fear of the Daily Mail. I'm an IAM Observer and, like many others in that organisation, am feeling deeply disillusioned with the direction that driver/rider training is being taken and the way its volunteers are being treated.That's the other part of the same set of attitudes that you describe and it's deeply depressing.
Funnily enough, I'm now back in (at the start) of the HPC process and have so far found them a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stultifying environment.
I now live in Highland Scotland and, whilst - for the most part - LAs haven't succumbed to the idiotic devaluing of speed limits with arbitrary 40s & 50s, we do have particular problems with the mix of drivers on the roads around here: nervous tourists who've never either driven a manual car or driven on twisty roads; amphetamine-crazed logging truck drivers trying to beat their tachos; tourist coach drivers who are required to give complete tour guide commentaries to their passengers whilst navigating same roads - and that's before you add in the usual mix of drunk locals and incompetents. The 40mph queues of sanctimonious gits apply here as well - not usually a problem on the bike, but the car is another matter: and basically, if there aren't at least two options to drop in safely, I won't take an overtake opportunity. Two? Yes, because far too often, someone will deliberately close the gap when you're overtaking, no matter how large and safe it was when you started. Had that happen recently with an old couple in a small diesel Renault MPV - nice clean overtake, stayed out much longer than I needed to to in order not to startle them, then dropped in to a nice large gap. So far, so good. Next thing is the guy is flashing and honking at me, has closed right up to my bumper and weaving around all over the road. I've since reviewed my dashcam video to be entirely sure that I hadn't done ANYTHING that could be construed as aggressive and I'd be entirely happy to have it presented as a textbook overtake. What the video doesn't show is that, entering the blind right-hander at the end of the straight, the Renault had then pulled right alongside me on the offside. If anything had been coming the other way, there'd have been funerals. So when we - as hopefully thinking, careful and considerate drivers, are up against that sort of behaviour, what chance is there? One approach is to use the bike method: if your car is up to it, overtake so bloody fast that the overtakee has no chance to react negatively. I prefer not to do my overtakes at a huge delta-v, but it does have it's advantages.
Posted: Sat Nov 08, 2014 9:55 am
