Fast Road Driving Techniques Part 3

If you are driving faster than other drivers you need to start driving for other drivers as well as yourself. You need to start expecting the worst and most stupid actions from other drivers before they know they are going to do it themselves.

You need to start reading the language of the cars around you and most importantly the cars in front of you.

Is the car in front of you weaving slightly in the lane?
Is the car in front of you gradually heading out of it's lane?
Is the car in the slow lane running up behind a slower car?
Is there a car joining the freeway in front of the car you are overtaking?
And the list goes on and on. Is there anything happening in front of you that would lead you to believe that someone is going to be pulling into your lane?

And if so what action are you going to take if the worst thing does happen?

Brake? Beep the horn? Flash the lights? Change lane? Overtake? And preferably you want to be taking these actions slightly before the worst does happen, you want to give yourself the chance to stop the worst from happening.

If you are driving faster than most other drivers you have to anticipate their mistakes and try to correct them before they are happen. You could argue that it is up to other people to drive properly but having this belief is not going to make other people better drivers, at the end of the day you have to look after other people.

Accidents occur when something completely unexpected happens, so a glimpse of a driver is not enough, you need to be constantly reading all the drivers in front of you to try to build a picture of what drivers you are dealing with.

Is can be surprising how much information you can get just by looking at the body language of other cars for five seconds

The biggest give away is the model of car you are looking at, crap cars tend to have crap drivers, slow drivers tend to be crap if they are in the middle lane and the list goes on. One stereotype is probably not enough but if you can bolt to 3 or 4 that are all pointing to the same thing, more than likely you are going to be correct.

And all these tips change from country to country. People in different countries drive differently, for example drivers in Germany will tend to make dramatic manoeuvres with little or notice while apparently paying attention and driving normally. So while the tips in this article work for all countries it takes a while to get used to reading new people in new countries.

In summary, expect the worst actions from other drivers and make your plans in advance and always imagine you will be coming the other way before deciding to make an overtake.