To wonder how so many people are comfortable breaking the speed limit?

[AngeloMysterioso]

Is it just me? I’m pretty vigilant about sticking to the speed limit but more and more I’ve noticed recently that I’ll be doing 70 or just below on a dual carriageway or the motorway and someone will go flying past. God forbid I be driving at the limit on the outside lane, even if I’m going faster than everyone in the middle lane it’s only a matter of time before some knob is either flashing their headlights at me or driving up my arse (or both) while I wait for a big enough gap to move across so they can shoot off before doing the same to the next car in front.

It tends to be most often 4x4 drivers or Mercedes/BMW/Jaguar etc types. Maybe they just don’t think they should have to see the back of a 16 year old Fiesta!

If I’m going faster than the cars to my left, I am overtaking them. Do you not understand how overtaking works?

On a previous similar thread, I got a lot of grief for moving into someone's braking distance as no-one should ever do that. I'm not sure where people were supposed to go, but it was apparently really dangerous to do that.

It was a very bizarre discussion point.

Where I live the non-motorway section of the A1 jumps from a triple lane to a double to a single in just a few miles and it's quite satisfying when some arsehole zooms past you and ends up stuck behind a tractor a couple of cars in front.

I will admit I will speed when overtaking but only when I'm really confident that there is plenty of space. I won't speed generally. I never get mad at people doing the speed limit, I do get mad at lane hoggers though.

No, you don't.

If lorry is doing 58mph and lorry B is doing 59mph, I am allowed to do 70 in the outside lane to get past them both.

I am not going at 90 because some twit in an Audi or SUV thinks their expensive car gives them the right. I'll overtake both lorries and then move over. I might even move all the way back over the inside lane if there are no more lorries to pass. Fancy that! Driving to the road conditions AND keeping to the speed limit!

And the person who decides to whizz up behind me hasn't been reading the road. If you see two lorries side by side and a car coming up behind them, it's a fair bet that the car will want to pull out, so you ease up on the gas to let them out.

And the person who decides to whizz up behind me hasn't been reading the road. If you see two lorries side by side and a car coming up behind them, it's a fair bet that the car will want to pull out, so you ease up on the gas to let them out.

If your pulling out will impede someone else, you stay where you are until it won't.

Nothing wrong if you didn't pull out into the path of someone coming up behind you, and nothing wrong if you get back into a left hand straight away.

Unfortunately, far too many people in your scenario just pull out, sometimes without checking their mirrors and not indicating and then stay in the overtaking lane after passing your hypothetical lorries because there are another couple of lorries about a mile ahead and they can't be arsed to pull in for a while and pull out again.

One is material loss of goods for the supermarket chain, breaking the speed limit is not??

Why? Motorway driving is about give and take, not just flooring it and expecting everyone to get out of your way.

The car passing the two lorries has just as much right to use the outside lane as anyone else. Sure, they need to check and not pull out unsafely! But they don’t need to overly consider the rights of someone still at a decent distance behind who’s decided it’s their right to travel at 90mph and dominate that lane.

It’s worrying that some people don’t think they should have to do any giving, only taking, on the motorway. Or that all the giving way should come from the ‘slow’ (legal) drivers. Everyone needs to constantly adjust their position on the motorway as others join and leave. You can’t just set up in a lane and expect everyone else to adjust around you.

It's a simple rule to me, but amazing how many people out there don't stick to it.

There is a whole industry built up around it now.

Installing and maintaining the cameras. Running the courses and processing the fines etc. Then the counter industry such as sat nav, camera alerts and map updates.

To me it is more about revenue generation than anything else and there are a lot of VIs out there interested in keeping the gravy train going.

Indeed it is. When I was an Institute of Advanced Motorists observer, we had a fundamental rule that you should never do anything at all that makes any other road user change speed or course, and that would include changing lanes on motorways, regardless of whether the other driver was doing something illegal like speeding or using the wrong lane.

The fundamental rule when that happened was simply to keep away from them and let them do it, but prepare for any likely consequences, such as them crashing if they were doing something particularly dangerous.

You'd probably fail your advanced driving test if you changed lanes causing them to brake (depends on severity) or change lanes themselves and definitely fail if you tried to enforce them to drive legally, i.e. brake tested them or stayed in the overtaking lane ahead of them for longer than necessary to complete your immediate overtake.

I'd love to see the advanced driving test be made compulsory, maybe a year or two after passing the normal driving test, as an alternative to retests for everyone say every 10 years and 5 years for OAPs. We need to do something to improve driving standards across the board.

I'd love to see the advanced driving test be made compulsory, maybe a year or two after passing the normal driving test, as an alternative to retests for everyone say every 10 years and 5 years for OAPs. We need to do something to improve driving standards across the board.

Just a mandatory 10 year SAC attendance would do it. Paid for by the driver - £10 a year is a snip to keep your licence. I learned a lot on mine. Not that I was ever Stirling Moss to start with. 33 in a 30 is hardly Fast'n'Furious.

Diminishing returns and all that.

I’m pretty vigilant about sticking to the speed limit but more and more I’ve noticed recently that I’ll be doing 70 or just below on a dual carriageway or the motorway and someone will go flying past

Are you sure you are actually doing 70? Speedometers are allowed to over-read by as much as 10% and still be within legally allowable tolerance.

You could be doing as little as 64 with your speedometer reading 70.

I think you’d also fail your test if you drove at 90mph and flashed the people doing a reasonable speed, but you seem to think that’s ok 🤷‍♀️

There is also a relevant point that not everyone in the outside lane exceeding the speed limit is doing so illegally. But that is yet another scenario people fail to consider.

I agree with your sentiments re the advanced driving test, although I think a good half way house would be to make it "recommended" for people in certain jobs such as high mileage company representatives. I'm sure it would be possible to come up with some sort of rule set that everyone who either claims for 10000 miles a year from a business or has a company car that travels over 10000 miles a year should be subject to an advanced driving test.

There is also a relevant point that not everyone in the outside lane exceeding the speed limit is doing so illegally. But that is yet another scenario people fail to consider.

Tell us more, tell us more.

There is also a relevant point that not everyone in the outside lane exceeding the speed limit is doing so illegally. But that is yet another scenario people fail to consider.

Do you mean an emergency vehicle with blue lights? I'm pretty sure it literally goes without saying people wouldn't impede them.

Who else can exceed the speed limit legally?

Freeman of the land ?

I’ve already answered that question

@taxguru

we had a fundamental rule that you should never do anything at all that makes any other road user change speed or course

I’m sorry but, in the real world, this is utterly useless advice. Pretty much everything you do on the motorway is in response to other traffic.

First example that springs to mind:
If you’re pulling onto the motorway from a slip road, other drivers move over for you (or they should, if possible). Yes, you adjust your speed appropriately, but the other traffic can’t just blithely continue, with their two-second gap, with no reference to you; otherwise, on a busy motorway, there’d be literally no way for you to merge.

I know you’ve got your special advanced rule book there, but it doesn’t seem to make much sense.

Police also do "plains clothes" mock high speed pursuits using vehicles without blues and twos activated.

Other emergency officers may well have to use their own personal cars without blues and twos in extreme cases, ie if officially off duty but called in for a serious incident so without an official vehicle, or even a vehicle fitted with blues and twos may have technical faults rendering them inoperable.

Speed limit is 70 though, so if OP was already driving at 70 they've no need to be overtaking.

Is the implication that such a car coming up behind a car doing 70 in the outside lane would be able to prosecute for obstruction ? Even though they were not displaying any emergency lights or signals ?

Or does police training in such cases teach to circumvent any obstructions safely in order to proceed at speed ?

I live near a stretch of dual carriageway the police use for training you could set your watch by. In plain clothes cars. They seem to manage when they come up behind a car doing 40 (the limit) in the right hand lane.

You're missing the "makes" part of the statement. In your slip road example, most sensible drivers on the motorway would create a space for vehicles entering from a slip road by adjusting their speed to create a gap or by moving into the other lane if safe to do so. That's exactly what IAM drivers are taught to do when they're driving on a motorway passing a junction - in fact they're trained to think about moving over to the middle lane if it's clear long before the slip road rather than waiting till you're alongside it if there seems to be traffic entering. It's all about setting and adjusting your "course" in good time, in anticipation of hazards etc.

When entering a motorway, if you get to the end of the slip road and you've not got into lane, it's probably because you've not built up to a speed matching vehicles already on the motorway and not been observant enough to aim for a gap in traffic. You certainly don't force your way in regardless. It's almost always your own fault if you get to the end of the slip road and havn't merged into lane 1 and end up having to stop on the hard shoulder! But that's highly unlikely to happen as most drivers would make space for you if you're observant and match traffic speed and "merge" safely (as long as you're not an entitled prat driving a German car speeding to the end of the slip road and pushing your way in!).

It's a moot point because the number of prosecutions for "obstructing" is tiny, even when "obstructing" a bloody huge emergency vehicle displaying enough blue lights to compete with Blackpool illuminations and as much siren noise as Glastonbury! It really has to be the most serious case possible for even a sniff of prosecution, usually only for deliberate prolonged obstruction rather than simple lack of observation.

But no, chances of prosecution for obstruction when the vehicle isn't on blues and twos is probably on a par with finding London buses on the moon!

But that's not what we're talking about in this thread is it. I think the point is that it's not up to the average car on a motorway to "police" how other vehicles drive. It's a matter between the police and the other driver, we really don't want to get into vigilante territory.