Ah all the fun - it'd be interesting to watch that junction and see how many people take that route too.

Chris

Or perhaps a stupidity thing on my part! At the end of the day, if an officer is to pull me up on it, chances are that in his eyes it wasn't a safe manouevre and no amount of certificate waving would save me.

Not to divert the thread too much, but that's kind of the way I see undertaking. I hate it and (although I have in some circumstances) avoid it at all costs, even if it causes a delay or inconvenience to my journey. I simply don't think it's safe. But I know many on here feel it's fine. The highway code is a bit ambiguous with the use of 'queuing traffic' in the rules, and there's no real way to get an official stance on it which makes it all the more dangerous in my opinion.

It's a pity there isn't a 'higher authority' than the Highway code that sets out definitive rules for driving, rather than all the 'interpretation'. Especially when those enforcing the rules drive to an almost entirely different syllabus to the one the majority of road users have learnt to (a little knowledge is a dangerous thing). I've been trying to figure out if wearing a full face helmet in your car on a public highway is illegal or not for the last year or so. The closest thing to an answer I have is various police offers saying "If it were me who saw you then..." but nothing definitive.

Yes; I think I have deviated far enough from the original topic now, I shall leave...

Checked with a few people familar with the Road Traffic Act who say there is nothing specific prohibiting you from wearing a helmet in a road car and driving on the public road. However, if it was to affect your ability to drive and it was witnessed by a police officer then you may be done under dangerous driving/due care and attention.

It's not unknown for rally drivers driving between stages to keep their helmets on, although I guess most of these are open face helmets.

Interestingly, going back to cutting corners, I did some experiments today with different lines with following traffic (nothing oncoming!) and discovered that unless I took a very wild line, such as positioning completely on the offside, the car behind would generally follow my line. I wonder if this could potentially lead to problems for them as they will not necessarily have the same vision through the corner as the lead car does!

Chris

Checked with a few people familar with the Road Traffic Act who say there is nothing specific prohibiting you from wearing a helmet in a road car and driving on the public road. However, if it was to affect your ability to drive and it was witnessed by a police officer then you may be done under dangerous driving/due care and attention.

Yeah, the dubiousness I've been getting is almost entirely related to 'restricted vision'. Though, seeing as motorcyclists are deemed able to see, it seems down to the particular officer as to whether the car combines with the helmet to restrict vision 'too much'.

As for people following, I find that a lot do that when you overtake a stationary hazard too. I got a roasting from my driving instructor when I was learning for doing that and as such burnt it into my head.

I've been looking at how I drive in relation to all this corner cutting lark, and I've found that on the majority of country roads around here there's no opportunity to cut, or round off, many corners safely simply because the corners are generally that sharp you cannot see far enough ahead to judge it to be safe, or so shallow it'd be pointless to cross the line. I'd be interested to observe someone with a qualification use the technique simply to see what advantage it could have and if that advantage would outweigh confusing following drivers (which as you've found can be rather affected by it)

Check out Reg's (RULocal off Piston Heads) video

You can see how he positions the car for view and is not afraid to take a bit more road to open up a better view. Saying that, though, these roads do seem to lend themselves to it!

Chris

as for the undertaking, the highway code says its ok if there is quing traffic to the right...

a cue is defined as "more than two cars travelling nose to tail at less than the speed limit"

hope this helps. interestingly there is no law against undertaking.... (I originally thought there was) the police have to judge it as a 'reckless' dangerous' manouver, or driving without due care and attention ect....

as for the undertaking, the highway code says its ok if there is quing traffic to the right...

a cue is defined as "more than two cars travelling nose to tail at less than the speed limit"

hope this helps. interestingly there is no law against undertaking.... (I originally thought there was) the police have to judge it as a 'reckless' dangerous' manouver, or driving without due care and attention ect....

Nose to tail generally happens all the time - It's the size of that gap that isn't defined. Otherwise undertaking generally should never happen, as if the traffic is true 'nose to tail' there'd be no room to move back into the lane. Or there's three cars not moving over and two are very bad tailgaiters

I just generally feel it's dangerous as a majority of people don't expect it and don't check mirrors because they do not expect people to do it. Just as a majority don't expect people to cut corners or drive on 'the wrong side of the road' down country lanes.

It all comes down to the duality of general car instruction and 'advanced driving' techniques. Following cars down country lanes and seeing them 'straightline' or round off corners. I'd hedge a bet that 90% are doing it due to bad driving, not using an advanced technique.

Even looking at some of the comments on the YouTube video posted above; it's obvious a large majority of people do not understand 'advanced driving' or a lot of the techniques used, and that misunderstanding can cause issues.

Could you imagine Kevin 'just passed his test and got a new corsa' seeing that video and thinking he'll go out and give it a go? There's no law against it - in fact unless he's being dangerous its totally legal. Does that mean he's able to test it out safely? We have a driving test to ensure people are up to a certain standard and possess skills to use on the road. But then we say that there's also more (arguably, dangerous) techniques you are legally allowed to do, but no compulsory training required to carry them out.

It comes back to my point above. I'd not feel justified cutting corners around someone whose job it is to judge if I'm being dangerous (police) without at least a certificate up my sleeve to prove that I am actually doing something I know how to do and do safely. But I'm sure there are many people out there who don't have that attitude. And you're kinda saying that it's fair enough to practice these maneuvers on the public highway without prior training/tuition by saying it's actually legal. That's the only thing that slightly worries me - the Original Post was saying that the OP was surprised very few people used the technique and the first reply was a rather sarcastic dig at people who do not cut corners because they think it is wrong to do so. I think it's dangerous to push the technique(s) without pushing the actual training part as a priority.

Not sure if that makes any sense, but there you go

I only scanned the thread...... and just noticed someone asking about the undertaking rules, and though I'd have a go at clarifying them...

I'm not commenting on any of the previous posts, OR advacating and particular type of driving....

No problems. It wasn't aimed at you (I use 'you' meaning generic people I'm arguing against ). I just like rambling. (not the walking kind).

As a driving instructor (I believe?) what's your personal stance on undertaking then? With the ambiguousness of the rules and the odd definition of moving 'queues'? As an interest?

(not meaning to go off topic again)

That's the only thing that slightly worries me - the Original Post was saying that the OP was surprised very few people used the technique and the first reply was a rather sarcastic dig at people who do not cut corners because they think it is wrong to do so. I think it's dangerous to push the technique(s) without pushing the actual training part as a priority.

Sorry you felt my reply was a sarcastic dig - it was perhaps tongue in cheek but I stand by what I said and I suspect a lot of people see the centre line as a physical barrier and don't even consider it can be crossed. Maybe that's a good thing and I'm far from in a position to criticise other's driving and as such would only encourage them to use a specific technique if they were asking/interested about it and I thought it would benefit them.

Btw, I don't agree 100% with some of the decisions the driver makes in that video and I think his speed in some of the more built up places was a little high....

Chris

The only time I really cut/straddle the lines is on little country B roads where the increased visibility from not driving half in the hedge is a help. But I have to disagree with OP's original point - that of most drivers treating the white lines like an invisible barrier. Round my way it is all too common to find cars coming the other way around bends using half of my lane...and my wing mirror still bears the scars from a Jag driver doing just that (didn't stop either the ****). Likewise watching cars infront 'straightening' corners over blind crests, purely out of laziness.

And anyway, I actively enjoy keeping my car within the white lines and chucking it about a bit

I'm far from in a position to criticise other's driving and as such would only encourage them to use a specific technique if they were asking/interested about it and I thought it would benefit them.

Out of interest, what would you consider to be a benefit of this technique? ie why would you advise it to someone? To be able to drive faster seems a little moot as most speeds at or below the legal limit must be just as easy to achieve whilst not cutting the corners. Car control must also be close to the same if you're sticking under the NSL? As said earlier there's negligible effect on tyres/brakes. While I could see that it'd be fun and/or enjoyable I'm not sure what positive effect on the driving it could have to outweigh the issues arising from poor judgement? Unless, of course, you can push it as a good exercise in observation skills?

cutting corners also smooths out the drive, obviously you need to be able to see a safe distance ahead.

Benefits include positioning to improve on an already good view, improved stability of the car (not really a big deal in the dry below NSL, but in rain/ice it can be significant), improves the speed you can maintain through corners because you're not asking the car to change direction so you can stay on the power longer (reducing the amount of grip required).

A good example is if you have a series of 3 s-bends then by straight-lining them, you can maintain a view through them into the distance, whereas if you were to follow the line of the road, you may well lose the view in each of the bends....

Hard to describe, but hopefully the video goes some way to showing other examples...

Chris

No problems. It wasn't aimed at you (I use 'you' meaning generic people I'm arguing against ). I just like rambling. (not the walking kind).

As a driving instructor (I believe?) what's your personal stance on undertaking then? With the ambiguousness of the rules and the odd definition of moving 'queues'? As an interest?

(not meaning to go off topic again)

well if you're talking about the type of que we've all been in when traffic is moving very slow (upto 30ish) then you really have to undertake, the motorway wouldn't move otherwise, and people expect it...... this is how the highwaycode's statements on undertaking should be interpreted...

however, I personally believe it should be allowed anyway (and I don't mean people flying past cars on the inside at 100mph, while the car to the right is doing 60!) with maybe an increase in speed limit to 80mph, and more traffic cops to police its safe use (maybe a test section of motorway on the M1 near sheffield where its always busy, to see if it speeds up traffic flow.) I've driven on the highways in America, where this works SO very well....

an argument against this, is that people in this country don't expect people to undertake... I disagree with this, I think they look as much as they do when overtaking (I have many people try to drive into me in these 'normal' situations... (the average driver indicates/looks/moves all at the same time, which is why you get so many near misses... the advanced drive looks FIRST, then thinks about whether an indicator would be appropriate, then moves when its safe....))

anyone who would say, "people don't expect you to undertake" I'd ask this...

"You are passing vehicals in lane three, and also passin an incomming slip road, you want to move back to lane two, where do you pay careful attention to?!"

the answer is, people from lane one, moving out to lane two to let people in the slip road.....

if people can do this, i believe they can be trained to look and expect it, it special sections of m/way are used as trials, and accident rates monitered.... it wouldn't cost the dept.transport much, and our m/ways could potentially have vastly improved capacity, (seeing as the capacity tends to drop to half, when people don't move over from the middle lane to the inside lane!!)

my opinions

Interesting this came up on another forum and one of the police instructors advised the following:

There is no specific offence.

If you were to be prosecuted it would be for Sec 2/3 RTA.

What is expected of you is contained in the Highway Code. You must read & interpret that.

Where there is disagreement between your & a Police officer's interpretation on the topic, it may be the court that decides which they agree with.

Sec 2/3 RTA refer to careful/reckless/dangerous driving.

The general consensus was that the only problem where undertaking was concerned would be if the people being undertaken were inconvenienced in some way and forced to change course or direction.

An example of this is where you are in lane 1 and there is a lorry some way in the distance also in lane 1. In lane 2, there is a car travelling slower than you are (presumably staying in lane 2 because of the lorry) so the police would not have a problem with you undertaking so long as you had plenty of time to get into lane 2 before the lorry. Where this situation becomes more complicated, however, is when you have to factor in lane 3 traffic which may also be returning to lane 2 after overtaking the car you are undertaking. You also have to factor in that the chap in lane 2 may "wake up" and decide he should be in lane 1 as you're passing him so you need to make sure he's aware you're there.

With so many variables it can be very hard to plan for and I'd only do it if I was 100% sure of the outcome.

Chris

An example of this is where you are in lane 1 and there is a lorry some way in the distance also in lane 1. In lane 2, there is a car travelling slower than you are (presumably staying in lane 2 because of the lorry) so the police would not have a problem with you undertaking so long as you had plenty of time to get into lane 2 before the lorry. Where this situation becomes more complicated, however, is when you have to factor in lane 3 traffic which may also be returning to lane 2 after overtaking the car you are undertaking. You also have to factor in that the chap in lane 2 may "wake up" and decide he should be in lane 1 as you're passing him so you need to make sure he's aware you're there.

But then the car traveling in lane 2 should be going faster than the lorry (as he shouldn't be there unless 'overtaking') So in effect you are going to need to go faster than him, which puts you between the lorry (going considerably slower than you) and the lane 2 car (possibly speeding up to overtake) so your gap is exponentially shrinking before you even consider lane 3 traffic. It's hard to think that that's a helpful maneuver? Unless the gap is huge and the view is terrific. And then the problem isn't anything to do with undertaking, it's to do with the car in lane 2's lane discipline. Surely it's much easier to 'teach' people good lane discipline than teach them to undertake and to be aware of undertakers effectively?

Surely it's much easier to 'teach' people good lane discipline than teach them to undertake and to be aware of undertakers effectively?

Absolutely! But how many times have you seen people stay in the lane they're in (with a queue of traffic behind them) because they want to overtake a lorry in the distance and know that if they pull in to lane 1 they'll never be let out again?

All about attitude really and I'm sure people would show more lane discipline if there was more courtesy on the roads....

Chris

Btw, I don't agree 100% with some of the decisions the driver makes in that video and I think his speed in some of the more built up places was a little high....

Chris

Just out of interest, which parts (other than the speed bit) didn't you agree with? I didn't watch all of the video, but quite early on the driver stayed out very wide to improve the visibility around a left hand bend... my thought on it was if something WAS coming, he'd have a hell of a long way to move back to get to his side of the road and not a lot of distance to do it in!

Could you imagine Kevin 'just passed his test and got a new corsa' seeing that video and thinking he'll go out and give it a go? There's no law against it - in fact unless he's being dangerous its totally legal. Does that mean he's able to test it out safely? We have a driving test to ensure people are up to a certain standard and possess skills to use on the road. But then we say that there's also more (arguably, dangerous) techniques you are legally allowed to do, but no compulsory training required to carry them out.

But do you feel that having passed his test he has nothing further to learn and his driving cannot be improved in anyway? The closest analogy I can think of now is of a toddler (ie a learner driver) once they've learnt to walk. Fair enough they've got the basics down, they can get from a to b, but that doesn't mean they're done learning. How many times have you had a toddler walk in to you in a supermarket or not pay attention to whats happening around them and nearly get run down by a trolley because they don't think of the consequences or dangers of their actions. This is something they learn as they do more walking, but there isn't any set training regime. Its just down to experience. In the same way that a new walker will fall over and hurt themselves so will a new driver (unfortunately with usually much more dire consequences) have accidents and hopefully they will learn from them and improve their awareness. From a technique point of view think of walking compared to dancing. Its not the best example to use, but it gives a comparison between a learner driver, and a driver that has developed new techniques and smoothed out his or her driving style. As a learner I was very wooden and my driving style has definitely smoothed out. I have passed the IAM test (at the age of 19 I think, and I'm now 26) and it definitely improved my driving, but at the end of the day you just get a certificate saying that you've complied with someone elses ideas as to what an Advanced Driver is, and in a Court of Law probably isn't worth the paper its written on! I don't think I was taught to cut corners during my IAM training and I'm pretty sure on the test the examiner told me he expected me to stay on the left side of the line, but to use the cars position within those boundarys to improve my view. My Dad has always cut corners and he was IAM trained too, but a good few years before and was told by the instructor "You've paid your road tax so use the road" and so I've built it into my driving and just adapted it where necessary as I feel it improves the smoothness of my driving and in some situations does improve the view of the road ahead.

I think the staying out wide is not necessarily a problem as the idea is that you can see and be seen earlier so you are creating plenty of time for yourself to react to hazards.

Below are my observations on the drive (I'm not the same standard as Reg by any means, but a few things I spotted)...

At 0:27, he is approaching a left hand bend and there is a car in front of him. From the view of the camera, he appears to blindly offside (the car blocks the view through the corner) and I also can't see where the road goes after the corner. Maybe from his viewpoint, he has that view...

There are also a few occasions where he offsides but it doesn't really seem to buy him anything and a couple seem to be late decisions which require a bit of additional steering and look a bit rushed.

At 1:00, he pulls out to overtake a Mondeo but we don't have a view into the hidden dip (maybe he does). Ive heard other drivers say they assume that if a car was in the dip, they'd have seen it approaching, however that doesn't take into account the "dead sheep" or similar scenario

I'm also not sure about the manouevre at 4:30 where he appears to compromise his view by being offside approaching a right hand bend - maybe going a bit too quick through the previous corner?

At 5:55 there is another hidden dip situation where we don't get the view until he is alongside the car and committed to the overtake.

Also the sheep at 7:35 looked a bit close

As I said, these are just my observations - on the whole I did like the use of positioning and I think it's an excellent video to try and demonstrate what I've been harping on about, although I do wonder if a camera mounted at "eye-level" would better help to understand decisions.

Chris

Yeah, and I'm guessing a personal knowledge of the roads in question helps a great deal. I noticed the early dip, but maybe he knows its not deep enough to conceal a car, although the dead sheep would be a different matter! Dips are difficult to predict though. I've hung back a bit whilst approaching a dip and wanting to overtake to allow time for anything within the dip to come into sight, allowed what I considered to be long enough and started to pull out only for a car to appear out of the dip!

With regards to my first point, my way of thinking about that would be if he wasn't that far across in the first place then there wouldn't be a hazard! I don't think I'd have felt particularly comfortable if I'd been a driver coming the other way to discover a car on my side of the road and from the distances involved as I perceive them from the video he'd have to dive back across fairly swiftly to make sufficient room for the oncoming vehicle. I'll re-watch and see if I still think the same.

*** Having rewatched I think at drivers eye level he can probably see across the top of the wall and see nothings coming. Its at the 40 second point that I was referring to.***

***And I definitely agree with the 5:55 comment!***

With regards to my first point, my way of thinking about that would be if he wasn't that far across in the first place then there wouldn't be a hazard! I don't think I'd have felt particularly comfortable if I'd been a driver coming the other way to discover a car on my side of the road and from the distances involved as I perceive them from the video he'd have to dive back across fairly swiftly to make sufficient room for the oncoming vehicle. I'll re-watch and see if I still think the same.

Ah ok I may have missed that, or it might be covered by my comment about offsiding without purpose. I agree with you that oncoming drivers might be a bit perturbed by seeing some "hooligan" driving on the wrong side of the road, but it can be a useful tool to see hazards earlier, eg where the road goes, see the crossroads up ahead, etc, whilst still allowing yourself plenty of time to drift back in. You also have to remember that a lot of oncoming drivers may not be looking that far ahead.

I did notice a couple of times in the video that he appeared to be going offside approaching a corner with no view through it, which is not something I'd practice because you're potentially exposing yourself to unseen danger and you also need to get the car back inside the lines before the corner which could well affect stability. That and it doesn't really buy you anything, imho, as you gain a brief view of a little way into the corner and then pull back in and lose it so anything could have changed in the meantime.

All different styles though so I try and pick and chose the things I like and incorporate them. I'm sure Reg'd be able to make plenty more comments if I were to attempt a similar cornering video

Chris

*** Its at the 40 second point that I was referring to.***

Good example of what I was trying to say in my 2nd paragraph in the previous post

Chris

Absolutely! But how many times have you seen people stay in the lane they're in (with a queue of traffic behind them) because they want to overtake a lorry in the distance and know that if they pull in to lane 1 they'll never be let out again?

All about attitude really and I'm sure people would show more lane discipline if there was more courtesy on the roads....

Chris

IME those people are never "let out" because they lack the cojones to actually turn on their indicator when they want out! "Your" lack of assertiveness is not my problem.