MOTORING: Avoiding unnecessary overtaking for steady traffic flow

As soon as traffic is heavy there almost instantly will be an obstruction  caused by a vehicle that simply cannot manage the ambient speed, or a dumbly designed junction, or someone stopping on the road, or a hole, or a bump, or someone taking ten times too long to take his turn. PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

  • Defects in any of these qualities erode queuer patience, which is fragile at the best of times and disappears altogether if it is constantly, chronically, and crassly assaulted by drivers who stop in midstream, or who jump queues and force their way into spaces, or who weave between lanes and cut across other traffic, or indicate without turning, or who dither in a sub-L Plate manner.
  • Steady flows simply do not happen. As soon as traffic is heavy there almost instantly will be an obstruction  caused by a vehicle that simply cannot manage the ambient speed, or a dumbly designed junction, or someone stopping on the road, or a hole, or a bump, or someone taking ten times too long to take his turn.

There’s a wise saying that “not every problem has a solution – sometimes a difficulty must be accepted as a fact of life, to be coped with over time”. 

So, is exceptionally slow traffic a problem or an immutable fact? We are neither solving nor coping with it, nor even recognising its importance as the root of the greatest number of our most serious accidents because it exacerbates overtaking.

The overtaker does his work with forward vision at least partially obscured, on the “wrong” side of the road, at higher speed, alongside an unpredictable moving object, and contraflow to oncoming traffic.Quite a list of jeopardy factors, with consequences predisposed to being high-speed and head-on.

There are a number of rules and skills designed to reduce the risk, but the most effective remedy is to make overtaking unnecessary. 

Dual carriageways virtually eliminate the contraflow problem;  overtaking (or “climbing”) lanes provide clearer space and opportunity; and where neither of these aids is present, the need to overtake very rarely arises if all vehicles are travelling at the same speed. This “conveyor belt” effect – so basic and crucial to any decent traffic flow – requires four enabling factors.

One is speed limits that enable motorists to make tolerably swift progress but curb excess.

Another is driver, vehicle and loading standards which ensure that all vehicles are able to travel at or very near the speed limit, so none obstruct the flow by going too slowly – which is far more disruptive than too fast.

Third essential is road design and maintenance that does not turn “flow” into dodgems and disarray, nor undermine the fourth, and perhaps most vital, enabler of all:  queuing confidence.

No one enjoys waiting for others to take their turn or get out of the way.  But most of us accept the queueing principles as long as we are sure the delay has reasonable cause, and that when our turn comes it will be respected by everybody else.

Defects in any of these qualities erode queuer patience, which is fragile at the best of times and disappears altogether if it is constantly, chronically, and crassly assaulted by drivers who stop in midstream, or who jump queues and force their way into spaces, or who weave between lanes and cut across other traffic, or indicate without turning, or who dither in a sub-L Plate manner.

Steady flows simply do not happen. As soon as traffic is heavy there almost instantly will be an obstruction  caused by a vehicle that simply cannot manage the ambient speed, or a dumbly designed junction, or someone stopping on the road, or a hole, or a bump, or someone taking ten times too long to take his turn.

Patience doesn’t stand a chance and, if you do wait for your legitimate turn and then negotiate the obstruction, every other vehicle in the Province will have overtaken you. “Wait for your turn then take your turn” becomes push and shove; overtaking becomes even more  frequent and in circumstances which are even more dangerous.

In heavy traffic, going very slowly is not the solution. It’s the core problem. Its remedy is a strategic priority to build a culture of “moderate cruisers” instead of a mixture of “blockers” and “boy racers.”