If you are driving slowly should you pull over to let other traffic pass?

[Ediswan]

I thought that slower traffic gives greater overall capacity, due to closer safe spacing of vehicles?

I recall doing this in an applied maths lesson at school. Assuming everybody drives at the same speed, at the minimum safe distance for that speed (using an equation which matches the Highway Code), what speed allows the largest number of vehicles to pass a given point in a given time ? Assume a standard vehicle length. From memory, the answer came out under 20 mph.

 

[stuu]

On an improvements to safety front. Does anyone remember the single carriage way roads with three lanes ?. Yes a centre overtaking lane. Back in the late 1970s I remember people moaning about the loss of that really useful middle lane. A friend worked in a car garage on the A20 he was a tough sod with no qualms about anything. He said Oh No you don't want to keep the "suicide lane" there is always at least one pair of cars in our yard that are totaly smashed up with bits of people left inside.

There's a few left, one just west of Minehead on the A39. There are others here and there

 

[Cowley]

There's a few left, one just west of Minehead on the A39. There are others here and there

Yes there’s not many of those left are there? I remember the one on the A30 heading east as the dual carriageway ended on the Honiton bypass.
I must admit that I never had the nerve to overtake on it. Just seemed inherently dangerous to me!

 

[bramling]

I travel that road regularly, but keep my speed to between 20-25mph.
(on my road bike )

Have done that in the past, but my legs are more tuned up for running these days. To be honest, you’re brave cycling on Hertfordshire’s roads, the standard of driving is dire.

Driving or cycling, it’s a lovely section of road, but only if one has a clear run.

 

[Bald Rick]

Have done that in the past, but my legs are more tuned up for running these days. To be honest, you’re brave cycling on Hertfordshire’s roads, the standard of driving is dire.

I must say, having cycled a fair bit around the country, Herts drivers are better than most. I was most surprised how Cambridgeshire drivers treat cyclists though - I had more close calls in a morning there than in a month in Hertfordshire.

 

[bramling]

I must say, having cycled a fair bit around the country, Herts drivers are better than most. I was most surprised how Cambridgeshire drivers treat cyclists though - I had more close calls in a morning there than in a month in Hertfordshire.

Oh yes Hertfordshire isn’t the worst, I’d say Essex takes that crown, closely of course followed by Luton.

But I’m not sure I’d agree Hertfordshire drivers are better than most. I can have a lovely journey back from the south-west, Wales or the north-east with no one being a pain at all - until one hits Hertfordshire. I might be biased because the Welwyn/Letchworth section of the A1 is so awful, but it isn’t the only problem area by any means.

 

[Cowley]

Oh heck. You’re going off on a cycling tangent now. I knew it was only a matter of time!

 

[InkyScrolls]

Yes there’s not many of those left are there? I remember the one on the A30 heading east as the dual carriageway ended on the Honiton bypass.
I must admit that I never had the nerve to overtake on it. Just seemed inherently dangerous to me!

There are a couple on A roads in Yorkshire.

 

[bluenoxid]

There are a couple on A roads in Yorkshire.

Where are they up here? Pretty well all of the ones I come across have been shifted to an implied priority in one direction.

 

[PeterC]

I can also drive a train with crap headlights at 100+mph without any issues.

Now do that without route knowledge or signals

 

[stuu]

Yes there’s not many of those left are there? I remember the one on the A30 heading east as the dual carriageway ended on the Honiton bypass.
I must admit that I never had the nerve to overtake on it. Just seemed inherently dangerous to me!

That one disappeared a couple of years ago. Sabre only lists six left in the whole country

 

[Cowley]

That one disappeared a couple of years ago. Sabre only lists six left in the whole country

Thanks for that @stuu. So possibly just the one near Minehead left by the looks of things.

 

[bengley]

Now do that without route knowledge or signals

Fair point, but cars have very good brakes and I don't need anywhere near as much time to stop. 60mph is not actually that fast.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Yes there’s not many of those left are there? I remember the one on the A30 heading east as the dual carriageway ended on the Honiton bypass.
I must admit that I never had the nerve to overtake on it. Just seemed inherently dangerous to me!

There are plenty, but they have mostly been modified so a double white line is used to allocate the overtaking lane to one side, or sometimes it is available to both sides but a solid white line with dotted on the other indicates which side has priority over it. You also get very wide single carriageways which provide for it more conventionally, including some fairly new ones.

 

[ABB125]

There are plenty, but they have mostly been modified so a double white line is used to allocate the overtaking lane to one side, or sometimes it is available to both sides but a solid white line with dotted on the other indicates which side has priority over it. You also get very wide single carriageways which provide for it more conventionally, including some fairly new ones.

The only bit of "priority overtaking" S3 that I've encountered is here:
A44

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Going up the hill it then becomes the more standard two lanes up, one lane down

 

[bramling]

There are plenty, but they have mostly been modified so a double white line is used to allocate the overtaking lane to one side, or sometimes it is available to both sides but a solid white line with dotted on the other indicates which side has priority over it. You also get very wide single carriageways which provide for it more conventionally, including some fairly new ones.

The sections of A303 like this are still quite hairy, as invariably there will be someone who goes mad when they reach the overtaking opportunity. They’re really meant to slow overtaking slow vehicles, not to act as de-facto dual carriageway.

The A303 also has a couple of sneakily located speed cameras on these sections, which whilst I can understand the rationale, in practice causes panic behaviour when someone sees the camera at the last minute.

 

[stuu]

but a solid white line with dotted on the other indicates which side has priority over it. You also get very wide single carriageways which provide for it more conventionally, including some fairly new ones.

That's totally wrong, it doesn't indicate priority, it simply means that the solid line cannot be crossed from the side nearest to it

 

[Bletchleyite]

That's totally wrong, it doesn't indicate priority, it simply means that the solid line cannot be crossed from the side nearest to it

Not legally, but it does give the impression that the non-delimited lane belongs to one direction rather than the other.

Most of them are like this, where one lane can't access the middle one at all:

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Some however are like this, where both sides can access the middle lane, but the impression given is that it "belongs" to one side. The actual legal position here (I think) is that the right hand lane can access any of the three, but the left hand lane only the left hand two, but this is not how it would be treated. The way people would generally treat this layout is that the left two lanes "belong" to that direction but that someone in the right lane can overtake in the middle if it is clear (and thus this marking reduces accidents compared to just marking three dashed lanes). Perhaps a law change needed to legally define this layout as what most people would treat it as, a bit like a headlamp flash?

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I don't know where there is one to show it, but I've also seen this without the dotted line between the left hand two lanes, thus a very wide left lane and a narrow right one. It is pretty obvious that the intention is basically the same as this but providing guidance to move over.

Finally this sort of very wide single carriageway is designed to ease overtaking:

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[AlterEgo]

There are plenty, but they have mostly been modified so a double white line is used to allocate the overtaking lane to one side, or sometimes it is available to both sides but a solid white line with dotted on the other indicates which side has priority over it. You also get very wide single carriageways which provide for it more conventionally, including some fairly new ones.

The A4146 near Leighton Buzzard is a good example. I have never ever overtaken on the “broken” line side on a road like this, it’s asking for trouble, especially as that section has two lanes on the other wise because people are filtering for a junction...

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== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Nov 2022 ==

Finally this sort of very wide single carriageway is designed to ease overtaking:

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I hate this section of the road, it encourages irresponsible overtaking. You only need to get two impatient people at the same time to have trouble.

 

[ABB125]

I hate this section of the road, it encourages irresponsible overtaking. You only need to get two impatient people at the same time to have trouble.

You can fit four cars side by side on there. The width between the outside lines is (or, should be!) 10m. According to a quick Google search, the average UK car width is 1.8m, which I disagree with, it's probably more like 2.2m. Plenty of space for four cars next to each other!

No, I wouldn't want to do it either...

 

[Bletchleyite]

You can fit four cars side by side on there. The width between the outside lines is (or, should be!) 10m. According to a quick Google search, the average UK car width is 1.8m, which I disagree with, it's probably more like 2.2m. Plenty of space for four cars next to each other!

No, I wouldn't want to do it either...

Generally on this sort of road an "Indian approach" to overtaking is taken, i.e. that an overtake is something involving three parties, the overtaker, the overtaken and anyone coming towards them who move to their left to allow it to take place. It sort of works but isn't ideal, marking up three lanes with overtaking only available in one direction by way of double whites is safer.

Part of the A5 towards North Wales is similar.

 

[Ediswan]

According to a quick Google search, the average UK car width is 1.8m, which I disagree with, it's probably more like 2.2m.

There are numerous 6'6" width restrictions (1.98m). I am leaning towards believing Google. Annoyingly, some width data includes mirrors, some does not, and it is not always stated which applies.

 

[stuu]

You can fit four cars side by side on there. The width between the outside lines is (or, should be!) 10m. According to a quick Google search, the average UK car width is 1.8m, which I disagree with, it's probably more like 2.2m. Plenty of space for four cars next to each other!

No, I wouldn't want to do it either...

Four vehicles across used to happen on the A303 Ilminster bypass a lot, never seemed too bad at the time but I saw a photo recently and it's much tighter than I remembered. It also went fatally wrong on a number of occasions so has been relined as alternating 2+1 and is notably safer now

 

[bramling]

Generally on this sort of road an "Indian approach" to overtaking is taken, i.e. that an overtake is something involving three parties, the overtaker, the overtaken and anyone coming towards them who move to their left to allow it to take place. It sort of works but isn't ideal, marking up three lanes with overtaking only available in one direction by way of double whites is safer.

Part of the A5 towards North Wales is similar.

Generally on this sort of road an "Indian approach" to overtaking is taken, i.e. that an overtake is something involving three parties, the overtaker, the overtaken and anyone coming towards them who move to their left to allow it to take place. It sort of works but isn't ideal, marking up three lanes with overtaking only available in one direction by way of double whites is safer.

Part of the A5 towards North Wales is similar.

There’s a couple of such roads round here. They only really work when lightly used. When busy it all quite quickly becomes chaotic, and often quite dangerous.

 

[Cowley]

Four vehicles across used to happen on the A303 Ilminster bypass a lot, never seemed too bad at the time but I saw a photo recently and it's much tighter than I remembered. It also went fatally wrong on a number of occasions so has been relined as alternating 2+1 and is notably safer now

The A30/A303 from Exeter to the end of the Ilminster bypass has almost every single type of Trunk A road style layout on it doesn’t it? Before they removed the three lane bit at the end of the Honiton bypass you had:

Exeter to Honiton - modern concrete dual carriageway.
Honiton bypass - one of the earliest dual carriageway sections in the county.
Then there was the three lane section, twisting village sections, old Roman road dead straight lengths, a bit of dual carriageway on the Marsh bypass, more old Roman sections, followed by the Ilminster bypass with wide two lane parts and S1+2 parts as well.

It’s a great road to drive when it’s quiet but there are bits of it where you see people taking very silly risks just move three cars along a long line traffic which really isn’t going to make much difference to your journey time as the whole road is basically a linear 50mph line of traffic a lot of the time.

 

[Bikeman78]

That's the Something Must Be Done brigade, who generally don't apply logic to anything.
A few months ago, there was quite a serious crash (car going into house) back at home. This is a single-carriageway major A road kind of going through the middle of a village. There's a 50mph limit. The driver was drunk, and doing around 100mph. Yet there were still howls of protest from the villagers that the speed limit should be reduced to 40 etc, which would have made literally no difference in outcome of this particular accident. (And a 40 limit would make it much more difficult to pull out of the village onto the road, because the traffic would be slightly less bunched, meaning fewer gaps that are large enough to pull out into.)

There was a fatal collision in Cardiff a few years ago. A teenager got flattened by someone doing about 50 mph. The road in question became one of the first to have a 20 mph limit. As you say, no idea what difference that is supposed to make. Anyone who will drive at 50 in a 30 limit will also drive at 50 in a 20 limit.

 

[the sniper]

In parts of Scotland there are many A roads that are single track. They are almost always preceded with a sign. "Do not impede traffic, use passing places to permit overtaking" and most drivers do seem to. Motorhomes unfortunately seem to be a common exception.

I've found it's well observed and works well, particularly in the Far North. Making progress is largly stress free.

 

[GusB]

In parts of Scotland there are many A roads that are single track. They are almost always preceded with a sign. "Do not impede traffic, use passing places to permit overtaking" and most drivers do seem to. Motorhomes unfortunately seem to be a common exception.

Indeed, motorhomes are a bugbear of mine when using single track roads. Drivers of these vehicles seem to be completely oblivious to the queues of traffic building up behind them.

I've found it's well observed and works well, particularly in the Far North. Making progress is largly stress free.

Most locals will be used to it and there's a mutual respect. Exceptions are the above-mentioned motorhomes and, from experience, anyone who drives a BMW X5!

 

[Ken H]

There are plenty, but they have mostly been modified so a double white line is used to allocate the overtaking lane to one side, or sometimes it is available to both sides but a solid white line with dotted on the other indicates which side has priority over it. You also get very wide single carriageways which provide for it more conventionally, including some fairly new ones.

Does it imply any priorty? How?
Skipton Bypass has a section like that. And the A660 between Otley & Pool Bank.

 

[thaitransit]

Definitely pull over every now and then if there are safe stable hard shoulders to stop on. If its been excessively wet weather the edge of the highway can be very soft and can tip a truck over if unlucky.

If your on a highway that has overtaking lanes every 10 to 20km then keep on driving and pull left into the overtaking lane so all the cars behind can now pass you safely.