Many drivers are risking life and limb to overtake on country roads, a new survey has revealed – and it’s young male drivers who are most likely to take a life-endangering risk when considering an overtaking manoeuvre.
The survey carried out by Brake, the road safety charity, and Direct Line Insurance revealed that four in five drivers have felt endangered by an overtaking manoeuvre, either of their own, their driver, or another vehicle. Digging down deeper into the results though reveals that such risky overtaking is most commonly carried out by men (21%) and drivers aged between 17-24 year olds (a substantial 39%).
So prevalent is the issue that almost all drivers (94%) have witnessed a risky overtaking manoeuvre, and more than half see them monthly or more often. Most worrying, one in five drivers admit they have themselves overtaken another vehicle when they were not certain if there were any hidden vehicles or hazards they could have hit during the manoeuvre.
It is incredibly dangerous to overtake on country roads, where there will rarely be enough straight, visible road ahead to be certain that nothing is coming in the opposite direction. It is also pointless: if you are travelling at 55mph, and you overtake someone doing 50mph, and you have ten miles left of your journey, you’ll only arrive one minute faster than if you’d stayed behind the slower vehicle.”
– Brake, road safety charity.
These worrying results underline continuing concerns about young drivers with the latest road death statistics revealing nearly half of teenagers killed or seriously injured in car accidents were being driven by drivers aged 17-19 at the time. It has lead to renewed calls for a ‘graduated driving licence’ which would impose night curfews and how many young people can be driven in a vehicle plus the introduction of a one-year minimum learning period.
Image © Thomas Tolkien