Reg puts his money where his mouth is - overtaking demo
Discussion
It's all well and good writing my ramblings on here, but sometimes things need to actually be demonstrated before they make complete sense.
I had a run out with my two lads today to watch a rally, and there was a bit of charge left in the video camera battery once the stage had finished. Rather than waste it, I got my eldest to video part of the drive home. I've edited the footage down to show a small assortment of overtakes. I haven't commentated on the video for various reasons, but I've listed a few notes on the overtakes below.
There are several things to bear in mind when watching this. Firstly, the quality is quite poor. That's down to a combination of a quite bumpy road, an inexperienced cameraman and quality loss through uploading. I take no responsibility if you get travel sick watching it. Secondly, a video such as this is very restricted in view, so on a couple of occasions, I'm going out on an overtake in areas where it seems the view is restricted. I can assure you that the view wasn't restricted for me, as it seems on the video. Thirdly, watching the video back, my following position looks quite close. This is down to the limited depth of view from the video camera, and out on the road, my following position was mostly fine. Finally, all the overtakes took place on national speed limit single carriageway roads.
Oh, and this isn't a willy-waving excersise, it's just a practical demonstration of some of the stuff I've been going on about.
Overtake 1 - silver Skoda.
Whilst in the following position, you'll see me move my car nearside and offside to obtain a view ahead. The overtake itself takes place on a left hand bend, and it appears that I have a limited view. This isn't the case - the nearside of the road was lined with well-spaced trees, and I had a good view up the nearside of the Skoda before moving out.
Overtake 2 - Transit pick-up.
This was a relatively slow-moving vehicle which I followed for a short while, and overtook on a straight after a left-hand bend. I moved sideways, but delayed the acceleration slightly to make sure that nothing was emerging from the building on the right.
Overtake 3 - Silver 4X4.
This was a classic overtake off a right-hand bend. I closed my following position up to less than 2 seconds and positioned nearside. Although the two on-coming cars prevented me going immediately, they passed very quickly and the overtake was clearly on straight after they had passed, so I didn't drop back to 2 seconds.
Overtake 4 - Ford Mondeo.
Lots of interesting stuff going on here! I took my time getting into the following position, as the road was, initially, quite tight and governed by double white lines. I had to hold back for two on-coming cars, and at the point I went, I was conscious of a crossroads junction ahead - you can actually see a silver car approaching the junction and turning left towards me. In spite of this, the Mondeo was travelling fairly slowly, and I knew I could easily pass it well before the junction. After the overtake, you'll see the silver car emerge, which is a good example of why you should avoid overtaking with a junction to the right.
Overtake 5 - BMW 7 series.
A nice one, off a left-hand bend. On the approach to the bend, I initially moved left for the view, and then moved right to keep the nearside view. As we rounded the corner, I saw that the overtake was on by keeping that nearside view, and then confirmed it with an offside move prior to accelerating. It may look like there was a blind farm entrance to the right as I accelerated, but in reality, I had a nice clear view into it.
Overtake 6 - VW Golf.
This was more of a rolling overtake really. I had plus speed on the Golf, and it the overtake was clearly on from some distance back. One slight error though - I moved nearside after the pass, and then back offside for the left-hander. Staying offside after the pass would have been better.
Anyway, enough waffle - here's the video...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4OZwy6Piao
Enjoy.
I had a run out with my two lads today to watch a rally, and there was a bit of charge left in the video camera battery once the stage had finished. Rather than waste it, I got my eldest to video part of the drive home. I've edited the footage down to show a small assortment of overtakes. I haven't commentated on the video for various reasons, but I've listed a few notes on the overtakes below.
There are several things to bear in mind when watching this. Firstly, the quality is quite poor. That's down to a combination of a quite bumpy road, an inexperienced cameraman and quality loss through uploading. I take no responsibility if you get travel sick watching it. Secondly, a video such as this is very restricted in view, so on a couple of occasions, I'm going out on an overtake in areas where it seems the view is restricted. I can assure you that the view wasn't restricted for me, as it seems on the video. Thirdly, watching the video back, my following position looks quite close. This is down to the limited depth of view from the video camera, and out on the road, my following position was mostly fine. Finally, all the overtakes took place on national speed limit single carriageway roads.
Oh, and this isn't a willy-waving excersise, it's just a practical demonstration of some of the stuff I've been going on about.
Overtake 1 - silver Skoda.
Whilst in the following position, you'll see me move my car nearside and offside to obtain a view ahead. The overtake itself takes place on a left hand bend, and it appears that I have a limited view. This isn't the case - the nearside of the road was lined with well-spaced trees, and I had a good view up the nearside of the Skoda before moving out.
Overtake 2 - Transit pick-up.
This was a relatively slow-moving vehicle which I followed for a short while, and overtook on a straight after a left-hand bend. I moved sideways, but delayed the acceleration slightly to make sure that nothing was emerging from the building on the right.
Overtake 3 - Silver 4X4.
This was a classic overtake off a right-hand bend. I closed my following position up to less than 2 seconds and positioned nearside. Although the two on-coming cars prevented me going immediately, they passed very quickly and the overtake was clearly on straight after they had passed, so I didn't drop back to 2 seconds.
Overtake 4 - Ford Mondeo.
Lots of interesting stuff going on here! I took my time getting into the following position, as the road was, initially, quite tight and governed by double white lines. I had to hold back for two on-coming cars, and at the point I went, I was conscious of a crossroads junction ahead - you can actually see a silver car approaching the junction and turning left towards me. In spite of this, the Mondeo was travelling fairly slowly, and I knew I could easily pass it well before the junction. After the overtake, you'll see the silver car emerge, which is a good example of why you should avoid overtaking with a junction to the right.
Overtake 5 - BMW 7 series.
A nice one, off a left-hand bend. On the approach to the bend, I initially moved left for the view, and then moved right to keep the nearside view. As we rounded the corner, I saw that the overtake was on by keeping that nearside view, and then confirmed it with an offside move prior to accelerating. It may look like there was a blind farm entrance to the right as I accelerated, but in reality, I had a nice clear view into it.
Overtake 6 - VW Golf.
This was more of a rolling overtake really. I had plus speed on the Golf, and it the overtake was clearly on from some distance back. One slight error though - I moved nearside after the pass, and then back offside for the left-hander. Staying offside after the pass would have been better.
Anyway, enough waffle - here's the video...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4OZwy6Piao
Enjoy.
Thanks for that - a classy bit of driving, showing considered use of the available road and exemptions 
RoSPA would blow a fuse .
One observation - what's current thinking on taking a higher gear while traversing the crown of the road?
WilliBetz
RoSPA would blow a fuse
. One observation - what's current thinking on taking a higher gear while traversing the crown of the road?
WilliBetz
Edited by willibetz on Sunday 25th March 16:06
I hope you didn't go out looking for overtakes.
Some of the ground/sky/ground/sky moments made it a bit difficult to view, I'd be very very interested to see more of the same if you can find a better camera mount (or train the one you have!). It all seemed completely comfortable and relaxed, nothing that would cause any concern to anyone involved.
I take your point about the depth of field on the video, but just counting time for markers to go past your following distance looked to be closer to one second than two a lot of the time. I didn't feel you were too close at any point though, despite the foreshortening effect of the lense.
Thanks for posting it, I envy you your quiet roads!
standards said:
Very interesting-thank you.
2 questions-final O/T-gear change at start of O/T on right hand side of road-what's the offical line?
Secondly what's your car?
Wouldn't it be great to have that on a proper mounted camera and commentary. Maybe one day
2 questions-final O/T-gear change at start of O/T on right hand side of road-what's the offical line?
Secondly what's your car?
Wouldn't it be great to have that on a proper mounted camera and commentary. Maybe one day
I've had another look at that last overtake, and the gearchange wasn't ideal, but not for the reason you mentioned. There's no problem in changing gear whilst on the offside of the road, but I did change gear whilst I was alongside the Golf, which isn't ideal - I prefer to change gear before or after being alongside the overtaken vehicle. My fault entirely - the Golf driver was accelerating as the road opened up, and I underestimated how much he was accelerating, which meant I didn't travel quite as far forward as I would have liked before needing a higher gear.
As Nev said, the car is an E36 M3 Evo, with the SMG semi-automatic gearbox.
I said at the beginning that the camera work was a little shonky, but bear with me - it's the first time I've tried it, and the first time I've edited footage like that. I'll see what I can do about improving the camera mount next time. I'll also try and wash the car first too, as the windscreen was bloody filthy on it's unswept part!
willibetz said:
Thanks for that - a classy bit of driving, showing considered use of the available road and exemptions
RoSPA would blow a fuse .
One observation - what's current thinking on taking a higher gear while traversing the crown of the road?
WilliBetz
RoSPA would blow a fuse
. One observation - what's current thinking on taking a higher gear while traversing the crown of the road?
WilliBetz
No exemptions, as I was in my own car. I tried my utmost to keep within the national speed limit (I'd be foolish to do otherwise when posting the video on the internet!), and the only time my speed crept up a bit was during the last one, as the Golf picked it's speed up a little more than I was expecting. The driver didn't do it maliciously, he was just driving at his own speed, but I'd committed to the overtake before I realised and *ahem* it seemed rude not to finish what I'd started.
As for changing gear when crossing the crown camber, it depends entirely on your car. Some cars, most notably powerful FWD cars with wide tyres (although not exclusively so), have a tendency to be adversely affected by crossing the camber when accelerating. I know that all the Volvo T5s I've driven have been particularly bad in this respect. My car isn't badly affected on the camber change when accelerating, so a gearchange at that point isn't a problem.
GreenV8S said:
I hope you didn't go out looking for overtakes.
Some of the ground/sky/ground/sky moments made it a bit difficult to view, I'd be very very interested to see more of the same if you can find a better camera mount (or train the one you have!). It all seemed completely comfortable and relaxed, nothing that would cause any concern to anyone involved.
I take your point about the depth of field on the video, but just counting time for markers to go past your following distance looked to be closer to one second than two a lot of the time. I didn't feel you were too close at any point though, despite the foreshortening effect of the lense.
Thanks for posting it, I envy you your quiet roads!
I wasn't looking for overtakes really - I was more interested in getting some cornering shots for a future article on reading the road. The overtakes were just a small part of about 20 minutes of (mostly quite dull) footage. I wanted to try editing the clips down, and in view of my recent article on overtaking, I thought I'd post it up. The overtakes, as I've said before, simply presented themselves to me.
I'm not in the habit of counting out a following position any more - I've been doing it long enough to be able to judge it just by sight and vehicle speed these days. It does look like I'm closer than 2 seconds at times on the video, but it honestly didn't feel or look like it at the time. I've been out for another drive today, and timed some following positions, as it was bugging me a bit, but whenever I felt as though I'd got it right, my timings confirmed that I had. I can't offer any better explanation than that I'm afraid.
Thanks for the positive comments though - I think it's a useful aid to passing on skills and I'll definitely use it again, with a better camera mount next time.
Not so sure about commentary though - I hate hearing my voice on tape.
R_U_LOCAL said:
It does look like I'm closer than 2 seconds at times on the video, but it honestly didn't feel or look like it at the time. I've been out for another drive today, and timed some following positions, as it was bugging me a bit....
I wouldn't have thought you have grounds for worrying about being too close. It looked reasonable in relation to the speed, and in any case Von will support you as he doesn't seem to get too hung up over the two second rule - it's certainly not something to be slavishly applied without thinking.
Best wishes all,
Dave.
R_U_LOCAL said:
Not so sure about commentary though - I hate hearing my voice on tape.
It's always easier to see something demonstrated than explained in my opinion. If you don't like commentating, how about some subtitles giving pertinant points? Youtube might not be the best for that, but you could always upload the video to PH.
Many thanks for letting us share some great driving. Personally, I thought that watching it with Reg's notes to explain his point of view worked excellently.
Why the infernal SMG Reg? Though, in point of fact, you did demo one benefit by compared to a conventional manual - there was no need to take your hand off the wheel for the o/take alongside the Golf.
Why the infernal SMG Reg? Though, in point of fact, you did demo one benefit by compared to a conventional manual - there was no need to take your hand off the wheel for the o/take alongside the Golf.
Thanks for that Reg - particularly useful to have the description of each overtake to help decode the video.
FWIW, for my in-car video I use a tripod wedged between the front and back seats, and held in place by the seatbelts. Not an option with passengers, but if you're out on your own it does a good job of keeping things steady.
Looking forward to more of the same from the rest of the PH community perhaps?
FWIW, for my in-car video I use a tripod wedged between the front and back seats, and held in place by the seatbelts. Not an option with passengers, but if you're out on your own it does a good job of keeping things steady.
Looking forward to more of the same from the rest of the PH community perhaps?
pugwash4x4 said:
i'm a newbie this bit of the forum........
so, reg, nice video and some great notes- for those of us that don't know, what quals or experience do you have?
so, reg, nice video and some great notes- for those of us that don't know, what quals or experience do you have?
This thread gives the intro:
www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=356113&f=154&h=0
And any other threads started by Reg in this forum are also worth a read...
(Other articles and opinions on advanced drving are availiable
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