Selfishness vs courtesy - overtaking

[qualitystreet]

Hello. First post here.

I was driving along the A69 last week. West of Hexham, it drops to single carriageway with occasional overtaking lanes.

I was following two HGVs, which I wanted to overtake, with around five cars close behind me, as we approached one of these overtaking lanes. I knew this lane to be on an uphill stretch, and rather short.

As we approached the start of the lane, I dropped a gear, indicated, and prepared to move out. As I was doing this, the Audi immediately behind me quickly moved out right (into the hatched area, and without indicating) trying to get the jump on me. (I wasn't exactly surprised by this.)

I now had a choice. Back off, and let him get past me, or hold my ground. I was pretty sure that if I let him go, the other four would be with him in a flash and I’d lose my opportunity to overtake.

So I held my ground, and passed the HGVs as fast as I could (which used up most of the overtaking lane; my car isn't a rocket) with him on my tail. As I pulled in, he carried on (again in the hatchings) to pass me before pulling in, giving me the glare as he did so. Then he did a mental overtake on the car in front into the path of an oncoming HGV and went on his merry way.

So two of us got past the HGVs, and the four at the back had to admit defeat and pull back in (no doubt cursing the ‘moron' who decided to crawl past the lorries).

Now, I'm fairly sure that if I'd let him go, those cars behind would have followed him through and quite comfortably got past the HGVs. But I wouldn't. I would have joined the back of the queue halfway up the overtaking lane and not had enough space to safely continue. So I 'chose' to hold them up for my own benefit.

But that's their tough luck, right? I tend to think along the lines of ‘sorry, you should have got up earlier. I’m not going to banjax my own journey just for your sake. Wait your turn’. But I’m sure the other five drivers just saw an idiot who blocked an overtake and then crawled past the HGVs out of spite!

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

[qualitystreet]

Thanks for the replies. Glad to know my thinking is along the right lines.

It’s a Skoda Fabia 1.9 TDi with a dicky turbo. When it’s behaving it would have no problem zipping past the HGVs, but at the time it was having one of its off days. (One of the reason I was keen to overtake in an overtaking lane, and not into oncoming traffic!)

R_U_LOCAL said:

The first is to back off slightly on the approach to the overtaking lane. Before you get to the start of the lane, back off slightly until your following position is perhaps 4 seconds. Then, as you get closer to the start of the lane, take a flexible gear and start to accelerate early. Backing off will force the car behind to do the same, but if you do it subtly, they won't even notice they're slowing. Accelerating early will usually catch them slighlty off-guard and by the time they've started to accelerate, you'll already be starting your overtake.

That sound like a useful tip. I’ll try it. (Although I imagine if done wrong it could be interpreted as gamesmanship and really get the Audi’s back up.)

[qualitystreet]

JM said:

One question I would ask of the OP is, why not pass one lorry then pull in to let the following car past and then if there was still space pass the second lorry?

There wouldn't have been space to get by both with a pause in the middle. I'm not sure what good it would do either. If I was going to do that, surely it would have been better to just let them all go?