Overtaking

You need to be looking regularly into your far distance to identify early enough that an overtaking manoeuvre is necessary. Your forward planning skills are of foremost importance here. You need to realise that you are going to overtake a vehicle early enough that you can do the mirrors, signal, wait for a gap and if there isn't one, still have enough space left to reduce speed to match that of the vehicle in front and still maintain a two-second gap! The farther ahead that you see slower vehicles the better.

An overtaking manoeuvre is basically two lane changes. One to move safely into the overtaking lane and one to move back into the first driving lane once you have passed the slower (or stationary) vehicle.

When moving out to overtake, a signal is always necessary for the vehicle that you are going to overtake, whereas when you are past it and move back in, an indication is only necessary if there is a vehicle in the overtaking lane behind you(if you are on a dual carriageway), or of you feel that a vehicle in front would benefit from the signal. It is not necessary for the vehicle that you have overtaken because they are expecting you to move back in to the left once you have gone past them.

If there is a sign for a right turn ahead of you always make sure that you check the other cars indicators before and as you start to move out. They sometimes don't indicate until they see you begin to move out. If you don't check then a near miss situation is on the cards.

Once you are past a slower vehicle you need to know how far to go before moving back in again. As a good guide for safety it is recommended that you do not consider returning to the inside lane until you can see the full width of the overtaken vehicle in your central mirror. This will give you a safe gap without cutting in across their bonnet.

Remember:- A good driver is basically one who makes well informed decisions