There’s certainly more than one way to skin a cat here. Let's look at a few standard chess moves and their alternatives, and some overtaking cockups and accidents. What I would stress here is that this is most definitely an area to be completely flexible, and what works one day won’t necessarily work the next. Because the road is such a fluid environment, I may well ride a regular route and approach an over take on the same stretch of tarmac in a different way every time. So maybe view this as a collection of ideas, for you to pick and choose from as you ride and not a black and white, this is how you do it guide!
Lets start simply; a bog standard bit of road! What could go wrong and what can I write to people that have probably been happily overtaking things for the last 20 years!!
If we want to over take a vehicle in front, we need to be able to see the road ahead, see that it’s clear... no oncoming vehicles, no hidden junctions ... The conundrum is that if we hang back to get that view, then we may well miss an overtake when it comes along because we’re too far away from the vehicle in front to do it. Conversely, if we sit too close to the vehicle in front, we might have very little ground to cover, but probably won’t get the view in the first place and won’t see some of those opportunities that are there.
So, we need to be cute, and work two positions with good acceleration sense. A following position, and an overtaking position. A following position is somewhere behind a vehicle that’s good for you to see. How far off the vehicle in front? No black and whites, I can’t give you distances or car lengths, it’s simply somewhere that gives you the best possible view.
Our overtaking position is going to be further ahead than the following one, much nearer to the vehicle in front. A forward assault point! And when we’re looking for an overtake, we're going to move up and drop back between these two points.
When we're riding, if we're lazy and we drop our eyes onto the back of the vehicles infront and look no further, the only overtake we'll ever make will be simplistic and handed to us on a plate. If we make an effort to look beyond the vehicle in front, and read the road beyond it, we can plan for opportunities, and when we sense one is coming our way, that’s when we move up. And we time it just so, our moving up delivers us to our overtake at precisely the right time.
..I said we time it just so .....
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The thinking mans biker sees an overtaking opportunity before it actually presents itself. So sitting back and thinking ‘ahh, could have overtaken there but it’s too late now’ is not for us. We want to be thinking hundreds of yards ahead and to appear (somewhat frustratingly to other riders) to be always in the right place at the right time.
Move up or move out?
That book you all hate talks about moving up into an overtaking position. If we literally did that, we could at times be accelerating straight towards the back of the car in front of us, and that in turn could lend itself to a late manoeuvre out, and a swoopy style that carries all our speed whilst cranked over. Our tyre grip trade off would be all wrong, and a swoopy style can end up using far more of the off side than is really necessary …..
When my overtake looks on, If I move out early (so by that, I mean stepping out to the right, other side of the white lines, but I don’t pinn it yet or move nearer to the vehicle infront..) I get a good view. From here, I can see the road really clearly before actually committing myself, and if there is something I missed, I can simply come back in again. There are dozens of times when I might choose to move out, but not up. Think how much acceleration your bike has - it's much, much quicker than most cars on the road, let alone the average one. Can you afford to have a little pause sometimes and confirm what you think? Too right! And the added bonus of this style, is that you will nearly always be accelerating in an upright position which is good for bike stability.
So, should we always move out instead of up when we’re looking at going? Sometimes we have to move up first. We'll look at overtaking on the approach to bends in a moment, but there will be times when moving out early, will loose us our view and is not the way to go. You could also argue that the move out, pause, go routine, if done too deliberately can be very squared and angular, and arguably it could, if over emphasised, confuse vehicles both behind and in front. (‘What’s this bloke doing on my offside – is he overtaking or not..’). Quite often if the overtake is blatantly on, then it’s on – so do it and don't fanny. That having all been said, I like move out / go. In the right scenario (which is probably the majority) it’s a very useful tool. I use it quite a bit. And if I do move up (before out) it still has an element of up and out together.
If you followed a rider doing this two stage approach for want of a better word, this hang back then a deliberate move up, would it be stilted and manufactured? It shouldn’t be so.. It should be smooth, fluid and quietly efficient. It should be, that one-second the rider is holding back from the car in front, and the next he’s moved up and has seemingly conjured an overtake from nowhere and has gone. It goes back to that ‘you’re lucky’ conversation. You make your own luck, and by clever use of an imaginary bungee cord between you and the vehicle in front, you can use good acceleration sense combined with good planning to make good progress. There might be the odd time, when you’ll sense an opportunity, move up but then not go. So be it. Drop back and start your planning again. This will be much more relevant a little later when we look at overtakes approaching a bend.
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It didn't happen for us, but that doesn't matter, we planned for it and gave it a go..!
Overtaking and off side Junctions
Can we pass vehicles on the approach to an offside junction? Again, there are no black and whites but in my opinion, as long as you’re thinking, there’s nothing wrong with passing a car opposite an offside junction. But, (big but!), you’ve got to be one hundred per cent sure, that he’s not turning. By and large, the faster the vehicle you want to overtake is going, the more obvious it is that he’s going straight on. This is why this sort of accident is more relevant in town where speeds are lower, because at 20mph a car can still change his mind and veer into a side road at the last possible moment.
So at what point do we decide, he’s not turning right and it’s safe to pass? Only you can decide. Out on the open road in national speed limits, there will be a point when the vehicle you’re following physically can’t turn into a side road. On these occasions, the out but not up position can work well, and the moment you’re happy that he’s committed to going straight on, you’re in the right place at the right time to zip past. The downside of loitering out to the offside is that if he is going to turn, you’ll confuse him. All he’ll see is a bike in his off side mirror - “Is he passing me or what? Shall I turn, shall I wait, what the hell is this biker doing”?… Mean time you’ll be muttering “come on mate what are you waiting for…” and it’ll all get messy! It’s that biker’s instinct again, loiter out if you’re confident he’s going straight on and the second it’s safe pin it, but if there’s a hint he might turn, come back in to your 2/3s.
Passing a line of traffic
(Or a bit of a collection of ideas in no particular order!!)
Lets say you’re looking to pass a line of three, four, five cars? Roadcraft (sorry!) talks about 'identifying a gap into which you can safely return'. Now that might be, the end of the line of cars. It might be that the overtake is five or nothing. That doesn't make it unsafe, you've just got to be completely sure that you can safely do it. If you can identify safe havens within that line then that's beter still, even if you don't have to use them.
In this video, a bunch of guys are having fun on the IOM. Whilst the lead rider may well have 'identifed his gap into which he can ....' What about the guys behind? this sort of scenario is a classic group ride accident. The first couple go and the guys at the back, keen not to get left behind, somewhat blindly follow. Do the last two really know or have some sort of plan as to where they're going to come back in? It all works out fine, but if you regularly ride in a group, it's food for thought if you find your self at the back.
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Back to the move out idea again – If you’re passing traffic, it’s clear of oncoming and all is well, then providing you keep identifying safe returns, stay out! All to often riders passing a long line of cars will dip in and out of gaps as a little comforter, when there’s absolutely no need to. If there is no oncoming but you want to pause, confirm your view, then stay out opposite a gap, confirm all is good, and resist the comfort blanket of dipping back in unless you have to.
If we are passing a long line of cars where there is the odd oncoming vehicle, and we are floating in and out of gaps, it’s nice to do it all without point, squirt and brake. Another rough benchmark is to snap your throttle shut as you’re alongside the last vehicle before your gap. By and large you’ll float into the gap ahead with no brakes.
It’s human nature that we all like being thanked. Sometimes on the busy A roads, cars will move over a tad for you to pass. If they do, (and that’s if they offer it, not if you bully them!!) and it's safe, take it and then give them a little thumbs up. Contrary to what us bikers think! A lot of the car drivers do actually use their mirrors! You will be amazed how often, having accepted their offer, the car in front of you will see you thanking the car behind. So what do they do? They move over too. so we pass that one too; Thanks (thumb up). Car in front … car in front … car in front … We can start this sort of mexican wave, all because you’ve said thanks and they want a piece of it too. Try it – it works really well!
Generally speaking, if you get yourself into trouble passing traffic, it’ll be with the cars that you’re overtaking, not oncoming. Last summer I went to an accident where a motorcyclist was overtaking a line of cars. A car in front of him, (travelling in the same direction within the line of traffic that he was overtaking), came out to overtake as well. The car failed to notice the biker already overtaking behind him. The bike collided with the rear offside of the car. The rider lost his left leg.
How about this video. I don't know the history behind it, but I'd put money on the fact that the camera is in a lorry, and that the bike involved had absolutely no idea that the car you see was even there. Remember the kitchy 'what can you see, what can't you see' and all that?!
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If you are passing a line of cars, as you start your overtake (or for that matter at any time during it) you can try a full beam flash if you like, it was always encouraged in the world of training, but with modern bikes and head lights wired to constantly on, I’m not sure how much difference it might make. In a car, yep, I often flash my headlights prior to an overtake. Use that biker’s instinct. Who are you overtaking? Is there an M3 amongst that line of people carriers?
We mentioned overtaking opposite off side junctions earlier, and we said ‘go for it’ if it’s obvious that a lone vehicle isn’t turning. In a line of traffic however, be much more cautious. If you’re travelling down the outside of a line of cars and you see a warning sign for an off side junction ahead of you, alarm bells should ring in your head. If a vehicle way ahead wants to turn right into something, even though he (and the junction) may be hundreds of yards ahead of you, any gap you may have identified in your line of cars will almost certainly close up as they all concertina together, and before you know it you’ll be stranded on the offside, now unable to come back in, and sods law will dictate that oncoming traffic will appear. (Think about the IOM video - what if a car that those riders are bearing down on, completely out of sight to one of the rear riders, indicates right and demonstrates to every one around him that he intends to turn into something on the off side...?)
Having said that, quite a cute overtake can be made when a vehicle just two or three cars ahead of you, does slow down to a few miles an hour to turn right. As a biker, our natural instincts are often to move to the inside, but sometimes, if you hold that offside position instead, after the lead vehicle has made his turn, providing none of the other vehicles want the same junction, your good acceleration from five or ten mph will see you whip past. In the blink of an eye, of your three vehicles, one's turned off and you've just overtaken the other two. I often see bikers instinctively make this move to the inside and miss this trick - it’s a gimmee!
Is there a knack for judging distances for an overtake? Imagine we have a car in front of us and beyond that a corner. Have I got enough room to get out, past and back in before something comes into view? Or put another way, if I start my overtake now what will happen if the second I go, something comes into view? Again, these are all benchmark ideas and not set in stone, but as a rough guide, try and identify the halfway point between you and your limit point. Once you’ve identified it (and it takes tenths of a second!) ask yourself, ‘If I overtake now, can I get back in before that halfway point?’ Assuming any oncoming car is travelling at the same speed as you, the half way point is where you’ll both meet if you commit to the overtake just as the oncoming vehicle appears. Obviously if it’s a vehicle travelling quicker than you, that half way point moves nearer towards you, and if you’re on a mission and Miss Daisy comes into view in her Morris Minor, you’ll probably have more room and the point where you’ll both meet moves further away towards her. It is just a rough guide, but again, a useful tool for your backpack.
Have a look at the next one below. First off, notice how the lorry driver at the beginning of the clip moves over for us. No flashing by us, he did it of his volition, but if he's going to offer it up, as we mentioned earlier, lets have it thanks. (And we did - a thumbs up out of camera). Two cars later we're behind a bus. Whilst we've been happy to overtake in the hatching prior to the bus, it's not safe now. There are a myriad of junctions on the right that the bus could drift into. After those right hand junctions there is a long hatched safe area for oncoming traffic to turn right across us. Three cars approach, any one of them could plan for a right turn. If we use their hatching, we could be moving out into a head on collision. When we do overtake the bus, we use the following / move up chess piece. This time, the arrival time is to coincide with a gap in the traffic. See how for the rest of the ride we use the hang back when we can't, move up when its on and this style for want of a better word, of step out, pause, accelerate in nearly all the overtakes..
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Overtaking on the approach to bends
Ok, we’ve thrashed the straightish roads to death, lets have a look at overtaking and corners. Bikes were made for this! We are the velociraptors of the road. Ruthlessly efficient hunting machines that can pounce at the slightest opportunity!
Lets start with the classic right hand bend and this is where the bungee cord of the following / overtaking positions really starts to work to our benefit.
If I’m following a vehicle, and approaching a bend, what will come after it? Is there an opportunity to overtake just around the corner? Maybe I know the road or maybe there’s a hedge line or something similar that gives a good indication of the way ahead. Whether I can tell any of this or not, I want to close down that gap, and arrive, on this occasion, deep into the nearside of the corner just as that view opens up. Timing is everything. My deep nearside positioning will give me the earliest possible view down the off side of the vehicle in front, and by carrying some of that speed I’ve generated, if the overtake is on I’m in the perfect place at the perfect time and at the right speed to take it. The clever knack here is judging my bungee cord / acceleration sense, so I arrive in the depth of the corner and behind the vehicle at the exact time it all opens up.
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This chess move works well on the deeper more blinder corners. Like all these set manoeuvres there is sometimes a compromise, and the compromise here can be that you may have further to travel around the car, because you’re tucked into the nearside. (Although you can combat this by sort of squaring the corner off and turning a tad more sharply..) Nearside gives you the early view but further to go, offside gives you a later view but less distance to travel.
So would I approach a right hand bend in an offside position looking for an overtake? Sometimes the shallower right hand bends can lend themselves to this off side ‘less distance to travel’ position. It’s contrary to our normal positioning, but there are occasions when this time, it’s the better place to be. We might get our view a fraction later, but the overtake is a whole lot quicker, and its just a quick squirt and we’re past. Shallow bends can lend themselves to this.
If there are yin and yang for right handers, so there are for left handers too. Should you hold your normal crown of the road position?
Or do you get into the verge and look for that view down the nearside of the vehicle you’re following?
A lot of that will depend on the size of the road and the vehicle infront of you. We said at the very beginning of this thread, that these were a collection of ideas, so I can't say I never move to the nearside prior to a left hander, but more often than not I'll get my view from the crown of the road and drop back a bit.
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Again, it doesn't come off, but we're always thinking and looking!
If our view is a bit limited, can we come out to actually look for an overtake or should we only come out to confirm what we think?
Clearly, you shouldn’t come out to see if it’s safe to overtake in the first place but what about coming out to confirm your thoughts? It’s more semantics. In the video above we got a view down the inside of the lorry to start with. We can confirm what we think by inching out our view out on the offside and 'slicing the pie' (Any ex squaddies or firearms users here?) It safely opens up our view and is pretty similar to the move out idea.
In the video below, we hold our crown of the road position getting a good view down the nearside of both vehicles. Then we slice the pie , and we do it deliberately prior to a right hand junction, (remember what we were talking about with off side junctions and overtaking earlier..?), we wait and confirm it's all safe and that the car isn't turning, before nailing it in an upright maximum traction position. When we write about it, it sounds a load of old roadcraft mumbo jumbo bollox!! But look how fluid and natural it actually is in reality! It doesn't have to be pipe and slippers!!
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If there’s one common denominator in left hand bends, it’s probably the fact that the vehicle you’re following will be much more of a visual handicap to you than it will be approaching a right hand bend. Left hand bends are possibly not the best for the bungee cord forward assault point. It’s very easy to loose your view if you move up too early. This is especially so if you end up behind a van or something larger than your standard see through-able car. Nigel (Advanced biker on this forum) lends us this clip. Do you remember in the urban thread we mentioned 'Black Holes', getting sucked in and how difficult it is to back pedal and reclaim your view? See how the student here allows himself to get sucked in to the vehicle infront of him prior to going. Just half a dozen yards further back and he'd have got the whole picture. (Thanks AB).
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Blind overtakes.
If we are in a nearside position, a vehicle in front is say a van and our nearside view of the road ahead is good, we still need to clear that bit of blind road that the van hides. One way of doing this is to identify something ahead of the van on the off side of the road, (like a lamp post or a telegraph pole) and whilst keeping our view of the road ahead, wait for it to re-emerge behind the vehicle (somewhere over to our right shoulder). Providing we’ve not taken our eyes off the road ahead, we now know its clear to move to the offside even though we’ll be momentarily loosing our view of the road. And we can overtake using the halving the road idea, the ‘can I get to this point if I start to overtake now’ that we mentioned earlier. This is quite a tricky ballsy manoeuvre and we must have identified a point of return that oncoming can’t get to, before we commit ourselves.
Good-o!!
A little bit of road craft stuff there, see, it wasn't that bad was it?
Lets start simply; a bog standard bit of road! What could go wrong and what can I write to people that have probably been happily overtaking things for the last 20 years!!
If we want to over take a vehicle in front, we need to be able to see the road ahead, see that it’s clear... no oncoming vehicles, no hidden junctions ... The conundrum is that if we hang back to get that view, then we may well miss an overtake when it comes along because we’re too far away from the vehicle in front to do it. Conversely, if we sit too close to the vehicle in front, we might have very little ground to cover, but probably won’t get the view in the first place and won’t see some of those opportunities that are there.
So, we need to be cute, and work two positions with good acceleration sense. A following position, and an overtaking position. A following position is somewhere behind a vehicle that’s good for you to see. How far off the vehicle in front? No black and whites, I can’t give you distances or car lengths, it’s simply somewhere that gives you the best possible view.
Our overtaking position is going to be further ahead than the following one, much nearer to the vehicle in front. A forward assault point! And when we’re looking for an overtake, we're going to move up and drop back between these two points.
When we're riding, if we're lazy and we drop our eyes onto the back of the vehicles infront and look no further, the only overtake we'll ever make will be simplistic and handed to us on a plate. If we make an effort to look beyond the vehicle in front, and read the road beyond it, we can plan for opportunities, and when we sense one is coming our way, that’s when we move up. And we time it just so, our moving up delivers us to our overtake at precisely the right time.
..I said we time it just so .....
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The thinking mans biker sees an overtaking opportunity before it actually presents itself. So sitting back and thinking ‘ahh, could have overtaken there but it’s too late now’ is not for us. We want to be thinking hundreds of yards ahead and to appear (somewhat frustratingly to other riders) to be always in the right place at the right time.
Move up or move out?
That book you all hate talks about moving up into an overtaking position. If we literally did that, we could at times be accelerating straight towards the back of the car in front of us, and that in turn could lend itself to a late manoeuvre out, and a swoopy style that carries all our speed whilst cranked over. Our tyre grip trade off would be all wrong, and a swoopy style can end up using far more of the off side than is really necessary …..
When my overtake looks on, If I move out early (so by that, I mean stepping out to the right, other side of the white lines, but I don’t pinn it yet or move nearer to the vehicle infront..) I get a good view. From here, I can see the road really clearly before actually committing myself, and if there is something I missed, I can simply come back in again. There are dozens of times when I might choose to move out, but not up. Think how much acceleration your bike has - it's much, much quicker than most cars on the road, let alone the average one. Can you afford to have a little pause sometimes and confirm what you think? Too right! And the added bonus of this style, is that you will nearly always be accelerating in an upright position which is good for bike stability.
So, should we always move out instead of up when we’re looking at going? Sometimes we have to move up first. We'll look at overtaking on the approach to bends in a moment, but there will be times when moving out early, will loose us our view and is not the way to go. You could also argue that the move out, pause, go routine, if done too deliberately can be very squared and angular, and arguably it could, if over emphasised, confuse vehicles both behind and in front. (‘What’s this bloke doing on my offside – is he overtaking or not..’). Quite often if the overtake is blatantly on, then it’s on – so do it and don't fanny. That having all been said, I like move out / go. In the right scenario (which is probably the majority) it’s a very useful tool. I use it quite a bit. And if I do move up (before out) it still has an element of up and out together.
If you followed a rider doing this two stage approach for want of a better word, this hang back then a deliberate move up, would it be stilted and manufactured? It shouldn’t be so.. It should be smooth, fluid and quietly efficient. It should be, that one-second the rider is holding back from the car in front, and the next he’s moved up and has seemingly conjured an overtake from nowhere and has gone. It goes back to that ‘you’re lucky’ conversation. You make your own luck, and by clever use of an imaginary bungee cord between you and the vehicle in front, you can use good acceleration sense combined with good planning to make good progress. There might be the odd time, when you’ll sense an opportunity, move up but then not go. So be it. Drop back and start your planning again. This will be much more relevant a little later when we look at overtakes approaching a bend.
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It didn't happen for us, but that doesn't matter, we planned for it and gave it a go..!
Overtaking and off side Junctions
Can we pass vehicles on the approach to an offside junction? Again, there are no black and whites but in my opinion, as long as you’re thinking, there’s nothing wrong with passing a car opposite an offside junction. But, (big but!), you’ve got to be one hundred per cent sure, that he’s not turning. By and large, the faster the vehicle you want to overtake is going, the more obvious it is that he’s going straight on. This is why this sort of accident is more relevant in town where speeds are lower, because at 20mph a car can still change his mind and veer into a side road at the last possible moment.
So at what point do we decide, he’s not turning right and it’s safe to pass? Only you can decide. Out on the open road in national speed limits, there will be a point when the vehicle you’re following physically can’t turn into a side road. On these occasions, the out but not up position can work well, and the moment you’re happy that he’s committed to going straight on, you’re in the right place at the right time to zip past. The downside of loitering out to the offside is that if he is going to turn, you’ll confuse him. All he’ll see is a bike in his off side mirror - “Is he passing me or what? Shall I turn, shall I wait, what the hell is this biker doing”?… Mean time you’ll be muttering “come on mate what are you waiting for…” and it’ll all get messy! It’s that biker’s instinct again, loiter out if you’re confident he’s going straight on and the second it’s safe pin it, but if there’s a hint he might turn, come back in to your 2/3s.
Passing a line of traffic
(Or a bit of a collection of ideas in no particular order!!)
Lets say you’re looking to pass a line of three, four, five cars? Roadcraft (sorry!) talks about 'identifying a gap into which you can safely return'. Now that might be, the end of the line of cars. It might be that the overtake is five or nothing. That doesn't make it unsafe, you've just got to be completely sure that you can safely do it. If you can identify safe havens within that line then that's beter still, even if you don't have to use them.
In this video, a bunch of guys are having fun on the IOM. Whilst the lead rider may well have 'identifed his gap into which he can ....' What about the guys behind? this sort of scenario is a classic group ride accident. The first couple go and the guys at the back, keen not to get left behind, somewhat blindly follow. Do the last two really know or have some sort of plan as to where they're going to come back in? It all works out fine, but if you regularly ride in a group, it's food for thought if you find your self at the back.
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Back to the move out idea again – If you’re passing traffic, it’s clear of oncoming and all is well, then providing you keep identifying safe returns, stay out! All to often riders passing a long line of cars will dip in and out of gaps as a little comforter, when there’s absolutely no need to. If there is no oncoming but you want to pause, confirm your view, then stay out opposite a gap, confirm all is good, and resist the comfort blanket of dipping back in unless you have to.
If we are passing a long line of cars where there is the odd oncoming vehicle, and we are floating in and out of gaps, it’s nice to do it all without point, squirt and brake. Another rough benchmark is to snap your throttle shut as you’re alongside the last vehicle before your gap. By and large you’ll float into the gap ahead with no brakes.
It’s human nature that we all like being thanked. Sometimes on the busy A roads, cars will move over a tad for you to pass. If they do, (and that’s if they offer it, not if you bully them!!) and it's safe, take it and then give them a little thumbs up. Contrary to what us bikers think! A lot of the car drivers do actually use their mirrors! You will be amazed how often, having accepted their offer, the car in front of you will see you thanking the car behind. So what do they do? They move over too. so we pass that one too; Thanks (thumb up). Car in front … car in front … car in front … We can start this sort of mexican wave, all because you’ve said thanks and they want a piece of it too. Try it – it works really well!
Generally speaking, if you get yourself into trouble passing traffic, it’ll be with the cars that you’re overtaking, not oncoming. Last summer I went to an accident where a motorcyclist was overtaking a line of cars. A car in front of him, (travelling in the same direction within the line of traffic that he was overtaking), came out to overtake as well. The car failed to notice the biker already overtaking behind him. The bike collided with the rear offside of the car. The rider lost his left leg.
How about this video. I don't know the history behind it, but I'd put money on the fact that the camera is in a lorry, and that the bike involved had absolutely no idea that the car you see was even there. Remember the kitchy 'what can you see, what can't you see' and all that?!
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If you are passing a line of cars, as you start your overtake (or for that matter at any time during it) you can try a full beam flash if you like, it was always encouraged in the world of training, but with modern bikes and head lights wired to constantly on, I’m not sure how much difference it might make. In a car, yep, I often flash my headlights prior to an overtake. Use that biker’s instinct. Who are you overtaking? Is there an M3 amongst that line of people carriers?
We mentioned overtaking opposite off side junctions earlier, and we said ‘go for it’ if it’s obvious that a lone vehicle isn’t turning. In a line of traffic however, be much more cautious. If you’re travelling down the outside of a line of cars and you see a warning sign for an off side junction ahead of you, alarm bells should ring in your head. If a vehicle way ahead wants to turn right into something, even though he (and the junction) may be hundreds of yards ahead of you, any gap you may have identified in your line of cars will almost certainly close up as they all concertina together, and before you know it you’ll be stranded on the offside, now unable to come back in, and sods law will dictate that oncoming traffic will appear. (Think about the IOM video - what if a car that those riders are bearing down on, completely out of sight to one of the rear riders, indicates right and demonstrates to every one around him that he intends to turn into something on the off side...?)
Having said that, quite a cute overtake can be made when a vehicle just two or three cars ahead of you, does slow down to a few miles an hour to turn right. As a biker, our natural instincts are often to move to the inside, but sometimes, if you hold that offside position instead, after the lead vehicle has made his turn, providing none of the other vehicles want the same junction, your good acceleration from five or ten mph will see you whip past. In the blink of an eye, of your three vehicles, one's turned off and you've just overtaken the other two. I often see bikers instinctively make this move to the inside and miss this trick - it’s a gimmee!
Is there a knack for judging distances for an overtake? Imagine we have a car in front of us and beyond that a corner. Have I got enough room to get out, past and back in before something comes into view? Or put another way, if I start my overtake now what will happen if the second I go, something comes into view? Again, these are all benchmark ideas and not set in stone, but as a rough guide, try and identify the halfway point between you and your limit point. Once you’ve identified it (and it takes tenths of a second!) ask yourself, ‘If I overtake now, can I get back in before that halfway point?’ Assuming any oncoming car is travelling at the same speed as you, the half way point is where you’ll both meet if you commit to the overtake just as the oncoming vehicle appears. Obviously if it’s a vehicle travelling quicker than you, that half way point moves nearer towards you, and if you’re on a mission and Miss Daisy comes into view in her Morris Minor, you’ll probably have more room and the point where you’ll both meet moves further away towards her. It is just a rough guide, but again, a useful tool for your backpack.
Have a look at the next one below. First off, notice how the lorry driver at the beginning of the clip moves over for us. No flashing by us, he did it of his volition, but if he's going to offer it up, as we mentioned earlier, lets have it thanks. (And we did - a thumbs up out of camera). Two cars later we're behind a bus. Whilst we've been happy to overtake in the hatching prior to the bus, it's not safe now. There are a myriad of junctions on the right that the bus could drift into. After those right hand junctions there is a long hatched safe area for oncoming traffic to turn right across us. Three cars approach, any one of them could plan for a right turn. If we use their hatching, we could be moving out into a head on collision. When we do overtake the bus, we use the following / move up chess piece. This time, the arrival time is to coincide with a gap in the traffic. See how for the rest of the ride we use the hang back when we can't, move up when its on and this style for want of a better word, of step out, pause, accelerate in nearly all the overtakes..
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Overtaking on the approach to bends
Ok, we’ve thrashed the straightish roads to death, lets have a look at overtaking and corners. Bikes were made for this! We are the velociraptors of the road. Ruthlessly efficient hunting machines that can pounce at the slightest opportunity!
Lets start with the classic right hand bend and this is where the bungee cord of the following / overtaking positions really starts to work to our benefit.
If I’m following a vehicle, and approaching a bend, what will come after it? Is there an opportunity to overtake just around the corner? Maybe I know the road or maybe there’s a hedge line or something similar that gives a good indication of the way ahead. Whether I can tell any of this or not, I want to close down that gap, and arrive, on this occasion, deep into the nearside of the corner just as that view opens up. Timing is everything. My deep nearside positioning will give me the earliest possible view down the off side of the vehicle in front, and by carrying some of that speed I’ve generated, if the overtake is on I’m in the perfect place at the perfect time and at the right speed to take it. The clever knack here is judging my bungee cord / acceleration sense, so I arrive in the depth of the corner and behind the vehicle at the exact time it all opens up.
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This chess move works well on the deeper more blinder corners. Like all these set manoeuvres there is sometimes a compromise, and the compromise here can be that you may have further to travel around the car, because you’re tucked into the nearside. (Although you can combat this by sort of squaring the corner off and turning a tad more sharply..) Nearside gives you the early view but further to go, offside gives you a later view but less distance to travel.
So would I approach a right hand bend in an offside position looking for an overtake? Sometimes the shallower right hand bends can lend themselves to this off side ‘less distance to travel’ position. It’s contrary to our normal positioning, but there are occasions when this time, it’s the better place to be. We might get our view a fraction later, but the overtake is a whole lot quicker, and its just a quick squirt and we’re past. Shallow bends can lend themselves to this.
If there are yin and yang for right handers, so there are for left handers too. Should you hold your normal crown of the road position?
Or do you get into the verge and look for that view down the nearside of the vehicle you’re following?
A lot of that will depend on the size of the road and the vehicle infront of you. We said at the very beginning of this thread, that these were a collection of ideas, so I can't say I never move to the nearside prior to a left hander, but more often than not I'll get my view from the crown of the road and drop back a bit.
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Again, it doesn't come off, but we're always thinking and looking!
If our view is a bit limited, can we come out to actually look for an overtake or should we only come out to confirm what we think?
Clearly, you shouldn’t come out to see if it’s safe to overtake in the first place but what about coming out to confirm your thoughts? It’s more semantics. In the video above we got a view down the inside of the lorry to start with. We can confirm what we think by inching out our view out on the offside and 'slicing the pie' (Any ex squaddies or firearms users here?) It safely opens up our view and is pretty similar to the move out idea.
In the video below, we hold our crown of the road position getting a good view down the nearside of both vehicles. Then we slice the pie , and we do it deliberately prior to a right hand junction, (remember what we were talking about with off side junctions and overtaking earlier..?), we wait and confirm it's all safe and that the car isn't turning, before nailing it in an upright maximum traction position. When we write about it, it sounds a load of old roadcraft mumbo jumbo bollox!! But look how fluid and natural it actually is in reality! It doesn't have to be pipe and slippers!!
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If there’s one common denominator in left hand bends, it’s probably the fact that the vehicle you’re following will be much more of a visual handicap to you than it will be approaching a right hand bend. Left hand bends are possibly not the best for the bungee cord forward assault point. It’s very easy to loose your view if you move up too early. This is especially so if you end up behind a van or something larger than your standard see through-able car. Nigel (Advanced biker on this forum) lends us this clip. Do you remember in the urban thread we mentioned 'Black Holes', getting sucked in and how difficult it is to back pedal and reclaim your view? See how the student here allows himself to get sucked in to the vehicle infront of him prior to going. Just half a dozen yards further back and he'd have got the whole picture. (Thanks AB).
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Blind overtakes.
If we are in a nearside position, a vehicle in front is say a van and our nearside view of the road ahead is good, we still need to clear that bit of blind road that the van hides. One way of doing this is to identify something ahead of the van on the off side of the road, (like a lamp post or a telegraph pole) and whilst keeping our view of the road ahead, wait for it to re-emerge behind the vehicle (somewhere over to our right shoulder). Providing we’ve not taken our eyes off the road ahead, we now know its clear to move to the offside even though we’ll be momentarily loosing our view of the road. And we can overtake using the halving the road idea, the ‘can I get to this point if I start to overtake now’ that we mentioned earlier. This is quite a tricky ballsy manoeuvre and we must have identified a point of return that oncoming can’t get to, before we commit ourselves.
Good-o!!
A little bit of road craft stuff there, see, it wasn't that bad was it?