Motorcycle Roadcraft - new edition?

[Horse]

Multiple overtakes are fine.

As long as you do them individually:)

ie Assess each vehicle and the situation before committing to passing, even if you continue at a constant speed. And that means that you need a fall-back plan / escape route - and space (and time) to achieve it.

As an ex-RAF bike instructor I know said: "never take off unless you know where you will land"*. I was watching an obdoc about one of the air ambulance services, as they were about to take off, the pilot said, aloud, which direction he would travel, and why - it gave him an emergency landing area.

* A good guiding principle, from parking through to overtaking, is never commit to a situation until you know how you will get out of it.

[The Spin Doctor]

Acceleration points on the road are good opportunities for bike overtakes... Whats the forums view on multiple vehicle overtakes, now these can be very risky, as many will probably know.

Treat each as an individual overtake and plan where we can bail out. And be aware that just because we can see the place we intend to land NOW, there's no guarantee it will be there when we arrive. Queues are dynamic. Have a Plan B, an alternative 'landing zone' that we can get to, ideally earlier than our original.

A typical mistake is to plan to pull back into a tight landing zone, only to find the vehicle at the front is slowing down and the queue behind is closing up like a concertina and our opportunity disappears. The reasons are sometimes obvious. It's inevitable if there's a slower vehicle ahead, less obvious if there limit coming up - that happened to a trainee last year - he was very lucky the driver alongside backed off and let him back. Or maybe there's an obstruction ahead we can't see - one that I still remember was setting off into an overtake of a queue with a car coming the other way in the far distance. The plan was to land again in plenty of time. What I couldn't see was what the driver of the van at the head of the queue could see. He was catching a cyclist, and just as I set off he was rolling off the throttle so he didn't have to slow down too much thus making his overtake easier after the oncoming car had passed. That deceleration caused a rippled effect back down the queue as everyone reacted just a bit later than the driver ahead. It took away my landing zone.

Another all-too-common error is to assume that because we are overtaking, everyone else will give us a green light. We know that drivers often don't spot a motorcycle catching up (bends tend to get in the way) until we're already behind them, and there's little chance of any but the driver at the back of the queue having spotted the bike in any case - the further forward we go up the queue of cars, the more vehicles behind block the rearward view - I learned that one filtering. Accelerating hard to get past a queue in one hit and discovering the second-in-line driver pulling out to make their own overtake is all too common.

Ask where that driver's attention is - just like ours, it's ahead! Rather than blame the driver for not looking, anticipate that if the gap's big enough for YOU to pull off the overtake, it's also big enough for a car to get past. There was a video online some years back where a rider got nerfed by a Golf VR6. Of course he blamed the driver. What was bleedin' obvious from the video was that the Golf driver was also leapfrogging his way past the long line of slower cars. The bike caught the Golf and predictably, they both went for the same overtake.

If there are a couple of vehicles travelling unusually slowly, don't think "hurrah, this'll be easy". Ask why. A few years ago, I caught up two cars both doing 15 mph in a 40 limit, just at dusk at about 8pm. There was nothing coming the other way. It would have been easy to carry on at 40 straight past. But one thing I've learned as a courier is that someone driving slowly is often looking for something. I happened to know there was a B&B a few hundred metres ahead and wondered if that was what the lead driver was searching for. So I hung back at a sensible distance and waited to see what unfolded. Then the first car moved out and accelerated. And I discovered that what had been ahead of the car was a mobility scooter. I've no idea why the driver hadn't overtaken sooner, as the road was clear, but I was very glad I didn't look on that as an "easy" overtake.

And finally, this is where speed differential comes in again. It may seem a good idea to reduce 'time exposed to danger' by accelerating hard. But that exponentially reduces our opportunity to bail out if it all goes wrong. If the car at the front of the queue is turning right, and we've just nailed it past three or four cars, our chances of taking evasive action are effectively zero.

Know what can go wrong, then plan accordingly. Don't plan for things to go right, plan for them to go wrong!

[EDIT] Just seen Horse's reply - I'm in full agreement.[/EDIT]

[Dodgy69]

Yep, all makes pretty good sense that.

Another potential biggy i saw yesterday. I was following a coach turning left , on that T junction was a car joining my road and turning right. How often do inpatient followers overtake before bus has cleared and all of a sudden there's a car there.

[The Spin Doctor]

Yep, all makes pretty good sense that.

Another potential biggy i saw yesterday. I was following a coach turning left , on that T junction was a car joining my road and turning right. How often do inpatient followers overtake before bus has cleared and all of a sudden there's a car there.

Far too often. Twice I've been on four wheels and watched very near-misses when a rider overtook a vehicle turning right, without considering what might be going on on the far side of it.

[Scootabout]

Acceleration points on the road are good opportunities for bike overtakes... Whats the forums view on multiple vehicle overtakes, now these can be very risky, as many will probably know.

Agreed. Key risks ISTM are (a) a member of the 'queue' might also decide to overtake just as you're going past, and not see you, (b) judging speed and distance is even harder than for a normal overtake. If you do 'stepping stones' it should be safer, but some drivers will perceive you as 'butting in'. I had what I think was an example of that few months ago. I slotted back in, courteously I thought, with a 'curved' return (ie not cutting in front of the vehicle behind with a straight line return), but the lorry behind decided to use headlights and horn on me while getting too damn close for my liking. I think basically he was just a total ****. What was rather satisfying was to see him get stuck behind the slow car that had been the reason for the queue in the first place. He was stuck there for ages afterwards. I could see him on the horizon.

[dayglo jim]

As an ex-RAF bike instructor I know said: "never take off unless you know where you will land"*. I was watching an obdoc about one of the air ambulance services, as they were about to take off, the pilot said, aloud, which direction he would travel, and why - it gave him an emergency landing area.

I stole this phrase from a pilot (and flight trainer) as it works really well. I tried to make learners understand that this may mean returning back to your original point (if in doubt, bottle out), giving it more throttle, when you've noticed a new hazard or one you hadn't allowed for, just increases the risk exponentially (paraphrasing Spin, sorry to repeat).