Overtaking on a 30MPH road
 

Seeing another thread just remonded me of this.

I was following a car on a 30MPH road, the car in front was doing about 20MPH and its a long road. Behind me though was a marked police car.

Now would I have been within my rights to (safely) overtake the car?

I reckon I was but having the patrol car behind me made me think twice.:D

You could have if you didn't exceed 30, but it takes ages to pass someone at +10 MPH

As i thought, just a little paranoid about the police behind me :)

Yes if it was safe to do so, pigs behind you or not :thumb:

Was coming home last night and had the satnav on for ETA. On the motorway and the rozzers were doing an indicated 65 with every cnut sitting behind them. Satnav speed was 61. Saw a space and fired it up to 77 on the satnav, about 82 on the speedo. Probably 15 people waved me down and pointed to the rozzers. Rozzers didn't even glane sideways when I went past

Isn't that a quote from one of the Fast n Furious movies?

I normally stick with my gps speedo and sod what others are doing.
There are speed limits for a reason, stick to them and there is nothing they can do?

Before the queue I had been making 'good progress' cos some w4nker hadn't been there for an appointment and I was furious...... but I dunno - is it?

(I've been reading a disengage brain book about Net Force this week and read a reference to pretty girls 'I would crawl on my hands and knees for a mile over broken glass to w4nk on her shadow' - I first used that in 1991 - That feker Tom Clancy stole it from me..... maybe the Fast and Furious scriptwriters are quoting me as well :grrr: )

Bear in mind that 30mph limits are found in urban areas, which means lots of side roads, people coming out of drives, parked cars, pedestrians etc. Makes it considerably more difficult to overtake safely.

I was overtaken on a 30mph road a couple of months ago, but I was doing 30mph. What really wound me up though was that when it came to the national speed limit zone, the impatient driver who had overtaken me was now sat at 45-50 and I had to sit behind him for about 6 miles :cuckoo:

You're quite right, speed limits are there for a reason. Sadly, many of the revised speed limits have reasons only known to some anti car zealot in a local council.

Just to add, I thought that unless it's a military-issue GPS, the speed indicator isn't as accurate..........

Something to do with consumer SAT NAV accuracy not being as good as military stuff. ie you're better off trusting your car's speedo than the sat nav...... (IIRC :) )

DAn

Errrrrr, no. Sat Nav is generally +/-1%, where as a cars speedo can be upto 10% out, i.e. it can read 70 and you're only doing 63mph, (but not the other way round).

Fair enough :) I just remember something (probably to do with location rather than speed then) about this. I just assumed that the lack of accuracy on location (as good as it actually is - just not as good as military stuff! :D) would be the same for speed :)

Dan :)

Location shouldn't matter i believe gps aims for a minimum of 6 sats to be locked onto you, you only need 3 to get a fix on your location.

While the location of civilian "band" (its not quite that simple but it'll do for a description!) GPS isn't as accurate it doesn't have a relevance to the indicated speed. The speed is worked out from the time it travels from point a to point b - both of which are offset by the same amount by the inaccuracy so will be pretty much exact depending on how good your sat nav is at maths ;)

The whole issue about military GPS being more accurate than civilian GPS isn't as pronounced as you'd think - its only the case of a few meters, certainly not enough inaccuracy to get you lost. In most parts of the world anyhow *cough*. :)

Anyhow - I think overtaking in a 30 is 90% of the time, a bit dodgy - as said before - it's usually a built up urban area, and there are usually just too many hazards around to do it safely. In my local town the 30 limit on the road that goes to my village goes down a comparatively unbuilt up hill for a bit; and retarded people who don't understand the principle of a 30 limit overtake down there all the time at well above 30mph and it "annoys me greatly", usually because they only end up slowing me down when we enter the national speed limit and I have to overtake them again just because they overtook me dangerously in the first place.

I don't think I've ever been overtaken safely in a 30mph.

No reason why you cant overtake if the road conditions are ok and you don't exceed the speed limit.

Les

problem would arise if the car you were overtaking increased his speed by even a few mph then that would leave you open to either breaking the speed limit or pulling back in behind where the police car would probably now be.I think there would be a good chance of being pulled over and quizzed as that could look like a careless maneuver and theres no arguing with the police if they think they are right

Highway Code says that if necessary the car being overtaken should back off to allow the overtaking car to complete it's manoeuvre. Therefore the Police "should" pull the car being overtaken for dangerous/careless driving.

I overtake in 30s if/when safe to do so and without breaking any laws. I think there's also a phrase of "reasonable progress" somewhere in the Highway Code which refers to people dawdling along.

Yes but it is considered as dangerous driving if someone deliberately accelerates while being overtaken. So I think the other bloke would be doing the explaining.

Les

i didnt mean a deliberate acceleration from 20 to 30 mph as that would be illegal but more an increase of 2 or 3 mph that may not be noticeable to the police car following especially if they are watching the car that has pulled out to overtake,the distance required to complete the overtake safely and pull back in would increase quite a bit from a 10 mph diff to say a 7 mph speed differential.tbh it would be down to the police whether they stop you or not and if they do you have little case to answer,sorry but after this week my opinion of them has dropped

Fair play to you! Ive always noticed that 99% of the public sh1t themselves when thay see a rozzer on the motorway, even one of those wank3r highway patrols! Whilst everyone slows to 69mph i carry on past at 85mph (95mph with the highway lot) and have never been stopped!
PEOPLE-STOP BEING PUSSIES!!:rolleyes:

Do you honestly believe the cops would pull the overtaken car though even though he was driving dangerously?

Steve

Arguing about who would get pulled :Whatever_

It doesn't change the fact that on the vast majority of roads with 30mph limits, it simply isn't SAFE to overtake another vehicle that is doing more than 10-15mph (like a milk float). Junctions, parked traffic, driveways, pedestrians.. etc etc etc.. you know - all those things that make it have a 30mph limit in the first place.

Of course, there are those who consider their driving abilities to be so amazing that they include telepathy and precognition; if someone is one of these lucky people then carry on. Seems like a lot of effort and risk for very little reason to me.

Its all well and good being able to "legally" do something - but just because its legal doesn't mean that its the sensible thing to do.

I wasnt' thinking about built up areas, area like when your on a single lane 60MPH road, then it drops down to 30, some people do tend to do 20 through these and it's very annoying :D

I wasn't having a go at you :)

Its obviously down to the road - but we all know that there are a good number of people out there who just drive like tits; and 30 limits are where I get on my high-horse!

If they doubled the number of speed cameras and put them all in 30's the world would be a better place ;)

SATNAV is not so accurate on hills - up or down.

Speedos cannot read slow, but can legally read up to 10% fast.

Yes I do since I have seen reports in the past of people being prosecuted for exactly that.

Les

The americans who devised the civvi and mil versions kindly turned off that feature. It used to be mil was =/- 1m and civvi =/-10m. Now its the same.


However the funny thing is, they still get lost using it :D Just ask my ex's dad, who ended up a POW in Sirya during Gulf War 1, thanks to the Yank who was navigating, using GPS!

I'd imagine both military and civilian versions would struggle to locate Sirya :D

Oh har har!! Ok then Syria.

Same diff, he still got them lost!