Former suicide lanes
Discussion
Where I live there are a few stretched of road that formerly had a common, central overtaking lane (a "suicide" lane). Round my way, the custom is to treat it as a very wide two-lane single-carriageway, that is to say not overtaking where you would be driving down the centreline in the same lane as opposing traffic is in it.
Today I drove on the A46... This is a similar road, ie formerly three lanes, now two wide lanes. The rule there seems to be "treat it as if it still has three lanes". Essentially, filtering. Obviously I didn't die, and kept out of the way when someone was going to be in conflict but I saw a few dodgy moments where the overtaker was overly-commited to their blat down the centre.
So... What is the legal stance on filtering in a car/van?
Today I drove on the A46... This is a similar road, ie formerly three lanes, now two wide lanes. The rule there seems to be "treat it as if it still has three lanes". Essentially, filtering. Obviously I didn't die, and kept out of the way when someone was going to be in conflict but I saw a few dodgy moments where the overtaker was overly-commited to their blat down the centre.
So... What is the legal stance on filtering in a car/van?
osdecar said:
Because of the very same reason, in these roads when I'm not overtaking I tend to drive as close as possible to the hard shoulder, leaving the center of the road empty.
I noticed this seemed to be local practice quite early on - obviously whenever I spied something coming up behind to pass me or coming head-on I did the same... Better to facilitate a dodgy overtake than to have a car (or more often yesterday... a van) implanted in one end of one's car.Watching some of the overtakers and overtakees though... sheesh. I think it might be safer to reinstate the central lane but maybe have solid lines so it's only "legally" available to one direction on each stretch. I hate to remove overtaking opportunities (many of the country lanes my way have islands, solid lines etc to try and stop us from overtaking where it is safe) but people on the A46 were doing what can only be described as Eastern European-style overtakes... the overtakes were lazy, there was oncoming traffic, there was no real hurry to get past. I was half-expecting a Lada to randomly self-destruct so a man in a shell-suit could miraculously climb out of the wreckage.
So... legal then! With 150mph closing speed crashes a possibility I might not be starting this practice myself but if I absolutely must for some reason I'll use the "never more than one car approaching" technique
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