i kind of thought from my old learner days, that on a dual carriageway, you could pass on the left, if say traffic in right lane slowed, -it happens on a carriageway, and motorway, frequently. you just cant really slow down, coz someone in the outside/passing lane is braking....
sounds like from your explanation, that he slowed down, and you stayed at your speed, and passed him.

as for the BMW bloke, looks more like he just lost control, maybe understeered. was very lucky not to have been decapitated. and/or killed an oncoming biker etc.

sympathise with you regarding the speed course. you really are up on the ropes, when you know you are right, but the Police are backed with more bias, and have the experience of correct grammar/document/delivery, to tip the point of reason to the magistrate.

The rules for queues & slow moving traffic are clearer

It's much more debatable (as I found out) if the road ahead is clear and some is sitting in the right hand lane with a queue behind....

Not changing lanes to pass seems to be a key element - so the classic race up behind, hover, maybe flash headlights, get bored, cut left and pass will get you done.

In the left lane nice & early, maintain a constant speed etc seems a far more defensible position.

My personal favourite is being in lane 1 passing a car sitting in lane 3 when there is nothing else around - happens to me quite regularly on a 4 lane stretch of the A1 near me - just because there's another lane, people sit in lane 3 doing 60 with nothing else around them, apparently oblivious to the 2 empty lanes to their left.

Anyway - enough of my ranting

The BMW looks like he went over a bump, lightened the weight on the front and understeered - clearly a and was very lucky not to kill themselves and/or anyone else.

The fine seems very light - but presumably means tested There's no real logic or consistency to these things....

Alistair wrote:

so the classic race up behind, hover, maybe flash headlights, get bored, cut left and pass will get you done.

We protect the stupid - because they are supposed to pull in to the left, they might do so without looking properly, so you can't pass them on the inside. Or even worse, you might spook them into tugging the wheel the opposite way and into the faster traffic......

lane discipline in france/germany etc is much better than over here.. ... - .- -.




Y. O. L. O.
.

I think there could be a lot of debate about what constitutes a "queue of traffic" too. How far ahead does a car have to be for it to be a queue?

I wondered if the BMW aquaplaned - there seems to be a deep puddle on the inside of the bend that, if it caught the inside front wheel, would drag the car closer to the inside of the bend. then fight the wheel to correct this, over correct and you're heading out of control to the central barrier.

Having looked at it again The BMW takes a little bump in the road just before he veers left - I imagine he only had one hand on the wheel, Probably had a bald tyre or two and lost traction and then complete control on hitting the edge.

I hate lane hoggers as much (if not More!!) than the next person, but to give the renault driver his due, he had only just overtaken the car on the inside and could have been waiting for a decent distance to build up before moving over in order to NOT cause the inside car loss of vision due to spray. I know that's what I do when I am overtaking in wet weather.

Poor show by the Barrier though. Now that IS really worrying!

stan wrote:

lane discipline in france/germany etc is much better than over here..

I think the derestricted motorways in Germany help the lane discipline there for a number of reasons
* If you sit in the "Lear jet lane" then someone could thump you up the chuff at 250kph
* If you pull out into the outside lane, you'd better have looked properly
* There is none of the mentality of "it's a 70mph limit and I'm doing 70mph which is perfectly fast enough so I won't get out of your way so you can go faster"

Alistair wrote:

There is no offence of undertaking - there are multiple conflicting rules in the highway code..

We couldn't figure out what they were doing - we actually thought they were looking for something in the central reservation.

No display board - they weren't traffic police - they were in a Ford Focus

I even had eye contact with the passenger all the way past - he just watched me very slowly pass them - and as soon as I was in front, on came the blue lights.....

I would probably have got on better had I not told the driver what I thought of his driving

Luckily for me, the passenger confirmed in court that he watched me pass - led there nicely by my barrister, with a kind of how do you know how quickly he came up behind you kind of taunt

I'm not excusing the BMW driver at all. I'm just really surprised that he ended up in oncoming traffic. I thought the barriers were designed to keep cars on their sides of the road.