Gareth wrote:jlsmith wrote:I see that it suggests it must be considered 'necessary'. Would an otherwise safe overtake be deemed 'necessary'?
If your intention is to overtake then, yes, it is necessary to use part of the road.
Well, it could be argued that it is not ‘necessary’…
There was a discussion in another thread (can’t remember if it was on here or the other forum) regarding S/DWLs and whether bikers could cross a S/DWL to pass a queue of traffic – on the approach to TLs, for instance. The gist was, IIRC, some bikers said that they could because it was ‘necessary’ to cross the line in order to pass the queue; others disagreed and said that it wasn’t ‘necessary’, the bikers could and should wait in the queue…
Now we effectively have the same issue with hatched areas and the interpretation of ‘necessary’.
Whilst I accept that this hatched area is not bounded by a SWL would it not be reasonable to apply the same restrictions/exceptions to entering a hatched area as those applied to crossing S/DWLs when considering ‘necessary’..? – A vehicle travelling below x mph, a stationery/parked vehicle, etc. So, it depends on what you are passing/overtaking but I don’t
necessarily agree that it is ‘necessary’ to enter a hatched area just because you don’t want to wait behind a vehicle that is travelling at a lower speed than you want to.