>> - change the Highway Code to say "you must not overtake if your vehicle
>> cannot go at least 5 mph faster than the vehicle you want to overtake"
>
> How do you define "cannot go at least 5mph faster"? Vehicles just don't
> have _a_ fixed maximum speed, unless there's a limiter in place. It'll
> naturally vary up and down, quite considerably, depending on gradient,
> wind speed and direction. It's really not uncommon for me, in a 2cv, to
> be tonking along and catching something hand-over-fist, only to find that
> for some reason either he's suddenly gained some speed or I've suddenly
> lost some.
Sorry, after I wrote that I realised that I should have added the phrase
"for the road conditions at that instant". In other words, know what your
vehicle is capable of and if you find that you don't have the power, pull
back in and abort the overtake.
> And that's before you account for twats who think "I'm not going to be
> overtaken by that" and accelerate when you're half way past 'em. Like the
> prize cunt in a Celica on the M1 the other week - he came blithering down
> the sliproad, and pulled out _right_ in front of us, going considerably
> slower. No, I couldn't have pulled into L2, because there was something
> passing me. As soon as I can, I accelerate and pull out. I get alongside
> him, he accelerates. I tuck in behind again. He brakes.
I hate twats like that. When my parents had the caravan in the early 70s, we
found that occasionally lorry drivers tried to play this game - usually if
Mum was driving, probably because behing overtaken by a *woman* towing a
caravan offended their fragile masculine egos. In those days, caravans were
restricted to 40 so not unreasonably they were often overtaken by lorries.
Fine. But it seems that a few lorry drivers saw that she was a woman and
decided to brake as soon as they had overtaken. She'd overtake and they'd
either speed up as she did it or else let her continue and then speed up to
overtake her.
Some people take offence very easily. The other day I was approaching lights
on a roundabout where traffic was stopped in Lane 1. As I approached in Lane
2, the lights changed so I was able to continue at barely reduced speed
while the dickhead in the flash Subaru in Lane 1 had to accelerate from
rest. He seemed to take offence that I in my little car had "dared" to
overtake his "compensation-for-a-small-penis" car and he tried the
"overtake-and-brake" trick. After he'd done it twice I shrugged at him and
stayed behind as he slowed down progressively from 60 to 50 to 40 to 30,
reasoning that it was just as tedious for him as for me to drive at such an
absurd speed, and hoping that he'd get fed up of it before me. As he did...
