I’ve long said that about the most dangerous manoeuvre we perform on a bike is an overtake. Some people disagree, but if we look at the accident stats and then compare the number of overtakes we do every day with the other common accidents (junction collisions and falling off in bends), we should see that even the fastest riders are exposed to far fewer overtakes than the situations that expose us to either of the other two accidents – junctions (we pass hundreds every ride) and bends (likewise).
The fact that the risk of a fatal accident is still very high should tell us comparatively speaking how often they go wrong.
One of the more difficult (and thus more likely to go wrong) overtakes is one that passes multiple vehicles.
Extra considerations passing a queue
We should be able to see immediately that there are a number of issues above and beyond the simple “is it legal/safe/necessary to overtake” questions that we would always (hopefully!) consider.
The first is speed. It’s easy to think that if we open it up, we’ll be safer because we’ll make the pass quicker. But I’d suggest we shouldn’t be tempted to wind on the speed any more when we pass multiple vehicles than we would a single vehicle, just because the road ahead appears to be clear. We’re already likely to be travelling at a fair lick if we’re overtaking on the open road and that means two things:
- our stopping distance is long (double your speed, quadruple your stopping distance!) and whilst we may not need to stop, we may need to match speed unexpectedly and in a big hurry. Braking isn’t linear and if we need to pull our speed down from 100mph to 50mph, it takes far more than half the total stopping distance from 100mph. This fact of physics catches riders out when they ride faster than usual.
- speed causes tunnel vision; the faster we go, the more we pull our viewpoint back towards our immediate ‘future’. We tend to focus only on the task in hand and forget to scan properly further ahead, to the sides and behind. Cue a ‘where did that car come from’ moment.
The second is distance. We’re used to making decisions based on our ‘comfortable speed’ and adding extra speed means we need to look further ahead, yet unless we train ourselves to do just that we still tend to look where we normally look:
- our ‘perception and planning’ distance needs to be even longer if we travelling faster – now factor in the tunnel vision!
- the further back we come from, the less chance drivers ahead (either in the queue or in side roads) have of seeing us, particularly if we are overtaking round a bend (think where mirrors are aimed!!)
What goes wrong on multiple overtakes?
Once again there are several issues.
One is that riders try for the ‘bridge too far’. Rather than be content with the progress we’ve already made, we try to make yet another pass. At this point, we find misjudged their distance to the ‘dead ground’ concealed by a bend or a crest, then find a car heading towards us, or even simply run out of road to slow for that bend – it happens!
Likewise, try to avoid planning to take the last available gap when aiming to tuck back into the queue – we should leave ourselves one more ahead. It might seem we’re wasting an overtake opportunity, but that way, if the gap we’re aiming for disappears we should have one last chance.
Another mistake is to try to take so many vehicles at once that we simply can’t see the side turning in the distance. Now, if we’ve wound the speed on when that car suddenly slows to turn, or one emerges, we find we are struggling to slow down – and if the whole queue is slowing, even if we match speed, we’re going to struggle to merge back into the queue as it concertinas up.
So we’re planning an overtake because of a line of slower vehicles. Two questions to ask. What’s holding the entire queue up? What’s behind us? It should never be a surprise when trying to pass a queue that someone else is thinking the same way!
It may be a car or van (or even a bike we’ve not spotted) in the queue ahead, and if they’ve not seen us when they pull out, we may have to hit the brakes.
Or it may be a vehicle from behind. However fast we THINK we are, there’s always someone faster or prepared to take more risk.
The resulting accidents are often head-ons or the rider clips a car trying to get into a non-existant gap, having been forced back to the left because of an oncoming car. The speed we carry in overtaking ensures the prognosis for the rider isn’t a good one. Overtaking accidents are rarely minor.
Rushing it
If we can’t spare a moment to check our mirrors and at least consider a shoulder check before moving out, then we’re in too much of a rush, and probably too close to the vehicles we’re trying to pass.
We can alway plan ahead to some extent; for example, we could scan the mirrors in the middle of the bend that we’re hoping leads onto a straight but we should always have time to make a final check. If you find that you can’t… then ask yourself are you fully in control of what you’re doing?
Many experts will say a rider who’s check their mirrors regularly won’t need to check the shoulder blind spot. All I’ll say to that is that from experience is that a bike can appear VERY suddenly alongside you. If I haven’t got time for a shoulder check then I’m cutting the overtake very fine, and if I’m unhappy looking over my shoulder, I’m too close to the car ahead.
Is it necessary?
Overtaking is easy to get wrong, which is one reason I learned when I was despatching that the tortoise often does beat the hare!
I did a lot of long distance couriering and always preferred A and B roads to a motorway if I could find a reasonable route, but it did sometimes mean a lot of busy traffic to deal with on single carriageways.
The odd thing was I found that overtaking often didn’t get me much further up the road. I’d pass a car or ease my way past a column of trucks only to find at the next set of red lights at the next town they were right behind me. What had I achieved – 40 or 50m further down the road!
So it makes sense to only take on passes that REALLY make some progress. If we come up behind a very slow vehicle, then it makes sense to pass.
But if the bloke ahead is only fractionally slower, what’s the gain in passing? We might only be a few hundred metres further ahead at the next speed limit, where he’ll catch us right back up!
What about a queue of ten lorries on a busy single carriageway? How much distance are we really making down the road for those ten overtakes before we get stuck behind the next gaggle?
Stress and Tiredness
Looking back to my couriering days, I was often spending 10 or 12 hours in the saddle. I wasn’t just out for a fun ride for a couple of hours, or even a police shift! I found I had to pace myself to get home safely, and that I just couldn’t ride at the pace I could manage for a short ride. I found a relaxed rhythm.
Making stressful manoeuvres should tell us we doing something risky in any case, but it has a knock-on effect. It’s extremely tiring. Fatigue sets in and then the rest of the ride goes down the pan too – we’re now in an extremely vulnerable state.
Risk and Economy
Cutting out the marginal overtakes makes our ride MUCH less risky as well as one heck of a lot less stressful and tiring. It’s also easier on tyres and petrol if we’re gliding between gaps, rather than nailing it on the throttle and brakes in turn.
Try to avoid braking into gaps
I’ve been caught out (badly sometimes) on a number of occasions going for the “brake into the gap” approach, and the tighter the gap, the riskier it gets. The ideal is to match speed THEN move into it, and again that’s a lot easier if we’re not tempted to carry too much speed into the overtake.
Even where there is a big gap that is most unlikely to disappear, things can still go wrong if we’re trying to brake into it. Most recently this happened to me on a training course in Wales, where the trainee surprised me by going for the overtake at the end of a long straight, pretty much at the last moment before a bend.
I followed without really planning what I was doing other than thinking that I’d slot in behind the last car in the queue. Needless to say, just as I was braking a car came round the bend ahead. Assuming I was trying to get in front of him, the car driver ‘helped me out’ by hitting the brakes too, leaving me hung out to dry on the outside.
I ended up doing a 50mph rolling stoppie to get back in behind him.
The clue to me that I shouldn’t have gone? I wasn’t planning carefully, but made a snap decision. You have to be absolutely certain of an overtake, not just reasonably sure. The mistake? Even though it was a big gap, I tried to get too close to the car I was going to follow though the bend, the idea being that I’d be in a good position to overtake on the far side.
Don’t Rush!
Unfortunately, many riders are taught that a missed overtake is a missed opportunity. An (ex-police!) instructor said to me a couple of years ago:
“the mark of a skilled rider is the ability to make a snap decision when overtaking.”
I hate to say it but he was 100% wrong. I’d far rather sit there on the bike thinking “I could have gone” rather than lying in an ambulance thinking “I shouldn’t have gone”. Don’t mistake a ‘well judged overtake’ for one with no margin for error!
The mark of a skilled rider is actually to perform ALL the careful evaluation QUICKLY, by knowing exactly:
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WHAT to look for
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WHERE to look for it
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WHEN to look for it
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WHY to look for it
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HOW to look for it
That’s VERY different to making a snap decision or making the overtake itself fast.
Don’t rush overtakes. Take your time to think it through – it WILL pay off in the long run, even if you miss opportunities in the short term.
Overtaking and Post-test Training
Final point. Making your own decisions is particularly important if you are taking advanced training – don’t be persuaded into overtaking where you don’t think it’s safe. YOU are the only one who can make that judgement call. Your instructor can help and advise how to make the assessment more quickly and show you the skills but they can’t make the judgement for you.
As we practice, we get better at the skill of overtaking, our assessment of the hazards will get faster, but alway trust our own judgement at holding back. Remember the adage:
“There are old pilots. There are bold pilots. But there are very few old, bold pilots.”
So what’s the bottom line whether riding for yourself or under instruction?
If you don’t know, don’t go!