Safe Driving & Overtaking

When you may and may not overtake

Overtaking is prohibited just before or while crossing a junction, and anywhere your view of the road is obstructed. At the brow of a hill or on a bend. It is also prohibited across a continuous centre line, which you may neither cross nor straddle.

The absence of a No Overtaking sign does not make a blind stretch safe. The restriction comes from what you can see, not from whether anyone has signed it.

What the line tells you

Road markings answer the overtaking question before you have looked at anything else. A broken line is a guide or a warning, and you may cross it when it is safe. A continuous line is prohibitive: crossing or straddling one that divides two lanes is not allowed.

Passing on the right

There is one situation where overtaking on the right-hand side is the correct thing to do: when the vehicle ahead has clearly indicated, and positioned itself on the road, to turn left. Then you pass it on the right.

That is a specific exception, not a general licence to undertake slower traffic. Both conditions have to hold, the signal and the position, before it applies.

Judging whether there is room

Overtaking on a road with oncoming traffic asks you to estimate a closing speed, which people are consistently bad at. If you are doing 100 km/h and a car is coming towards you at 80, the gap between you shrinks at 180 km/h. Half a kilometre disappears in ten seconds.

Before committing, it is worth asking yourself three questions: what will I actually gain, how far ahead can I see, and how long will I need? If the answer to the first is "a minute over the next ten kilometres", which is roughly what raising your average from 80 to 100 buys: the other two rarely justify it.

Being overtaken

When another vehicle begins to pass you, hold a steady speed or ease off slightly, stay in your lane, and let it go. Accelerating traps the other driver alongside you with nowhere to go, which is how head-on collisions happen.

Situations you will meet

Some of these come up in the test as scenarios, and the expected answer is more specific than general caution.

  • A car starts to overtake a line of vehicles coming towards you. Keep to the right, slow down and flash your headlights.
  • A vehicle is coming at you in the wrong lane. Brake firmly, flash your headlights repeatedly, use the horn, and steer right only as a last resort.
  • Heavy vehicles at the top of a hill, where one may pull out to pass. Be ready to steer right, slow down, flash your headlights.
  • An oncoming car goes into a skid. Slow down, keep well clear, do not slam on the brakes, and steer off the road only as a last resort.

Overtaking at night

It is harder simply because you can see less. Only overtake if you can see the road ahead will remain clear until you have completed the manoeuvre, and switch back to full beam as soon as you are certain you will not dazzle the other driver through their mirror.

What the test asks

  • Where overtaking is prohibited. Junctions, bends, hill crests, anywhere your view is blocked.
  • What a continuous line means, and that it may not be straddled either.
  • The one case where passing on the right is correct.
  • What to do while being overtaken. Hold your speed and your lane.

Watch for options that make overtaking conditional on the vehicle ahead being slow, or on sounding the horn first. Neither creates permission. The conditions are the line, the view, and the space.

Practise this

Reading is not the same as recall under a clock. Sit a full 45-question mock and see whether safe driving & overtaking comes out as a strong area, or try five questions first.

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