Overtaking, Undertaking... BUT Semitaking?

Raiser

I'm driving a good 17 years but this one is new to me......

Ok this might be hard to describe, but anyhow, I was driving from Limerick to Cork the other day when I was "semitaken" by a chromosome-deficient Moron in a Hyundai Accent.

Basically I was approaching being a safe distance behind a slow moving car that it was apparent I had absolutely no opportunity of safely overtaking under normal, sane conditions. The next thing some Scumbag semitakes me by using half the space between my car and the white line and utilising a similar amount of space over the line regardless of the traffic coming against him.

In a move that was obviously practised dozens of times on his Xbox, the Thick Cnut bastardized the laws of Physics and Volume to cheat death - He missed my wing mirror by about a millimetre and then swerved in front of me before decelerating to match the car aheads speed, it probably won't come across on here but in reality it is very unsettling and unnerving.

I wouldn't have bothered to come on here and post this except that it happened again in an identical and very dangerous manoeuvre 30 mins later.

So, have you seen this and is it the new thing?

rccaulfield

bad form! shudda rang the cops if you felt strongly about it!

BillyGoatGruff

Tis a fairly new thing alright. Just invented recently.

I guess it's not so much semitaking as just wreckless overtaking. Take the reg and ring traffic watch, I really do feel an IQ test should be part of the driving test.

dizzydiesel

This exact thing happened me this morning. I never knew it was called semi-taking.

Passat went by on a double continuous white line as there was on coming traffic. I swear to god I thought his wing mirror was going to come through my drivers window.

Insane.

langdang

Raiser wrote: »

I was driving from Limerick to Cork the other day when I was "semitaken"

Didn't happen near Croom did it? It's common enough on the good road there, they could have 4 lanes on that stretch tho!
Terrible road to make time on for most of the rest of the road, plagued with 1.4 corollas and focii.

AlanD

This is something that used to happen all the time years ago before we got a better standard of main roads around the country.

If you remember the places where we used to pass out cars before, it was just crazy driving! Our perception of what was safe was vastly different to our perception today.

For example, anyone remember the stretch of road coming in to Ballybrittas on the old N7. Just as you passed the Montague hotel. In relative terms it was a big wide road and as soon as drivers got there, drivers went nuts! Regardless of whether there was traffic coming or not, people passed out. So you'd have guys "semitaking" as you describe it, at every opportunity. Any space was a space to be used it seemed. I remember seeing on several occasions a car passing out a car who was passing out a car who was passing out a car. 4 abreast. It seemed normal at the time of course!

So "semitaking" may seem new. It's not, it's just that most sane folks don't do it any more.

Cookie_Monster

Had an UK reg volvo t5 doing that to me the last day coming home from Glendalough, overtaking a long line of traffic on some crazy place on the roundwood road

Anan1

I'm not for a moment suggesting that the OP did this, but there are still a lot of drivers out there who hug the white line regardless of how much space there is to their left.

1948Wolseley

Not too common over here, but the Turks are the masters of semitaking. It's so common over there that you become used to it after a couple of days driving, and barely bat an eyelid when it happens. Standard practice is to always leave half a car's width between you and the centreline on a blind corner and assume that there is a semitaking maneuvere going on in the oncoming lane. Also be prepared to jink right to avoid a semitaking car any time two or more cars are coming against you on a straight road.

weeder

have had this done to me a few times over the past year when i was on a motorbike that wasnt fast enough for them, always just after the arklow bypass heading towards redcross, scary stuff. was arctic lorry did it to me one day, oncoming traffic and all, flat out on a tdr125 and slowed down a bit on the incline and the lorry went for it. then he slowed down and i was stuck behind him the whole way to my turn off at the beehive

HermitHorace

Unfortunately there are nutters out there but slow drivers are the worst esp if they refuse to leave any space for people to over-take.

This scenario can be handled by most except nutters.

langdang

Anan1 wrote: »

I'm not for a moment suggesting that the OP did this, but there are still a lot of drivers out there who hug the white line regardless of how much space there is to their left.

Indeed, the little wing mirror almost-kiss could be interpreted as "KEEP LEFT! way over there, loadsa space on your LEFT!"
I'd usually take the safer option of just glaring though...

Seriously tho, I don't try run people of the road, but there are some stretches of the Limerick Cork road where you've got to overtake any of the usual suspects or spend the next half hour in a convoy concertina-ing between 30mph and 50mph.

There's stretches where semitaking is dodgy but understandable, and places where it's just plain madness on that road...

galwaytt

ooops, I must have wandered into the wrong thread, I thought someone was reporting the theft of one of these........:D



I'll get my coat..........:p

B11gt00e

Galway TT:D:D:D rubber duck rubber duck!!!

I once had to overtake a fella that was semitaking too slowly.








Stay on your horses... It was wayyy back in the day. No Worries:pac:.

Marlow

Overtaking on the white-line is quite common in Sweden on roads with wide hard-shoulders like here.

However, it's only done, when people move into the hard-shoulder for you on both sides and they usually do on swedish country roads.

This requires an awareness of all drivers (you, the car overtaking and the traffic coming against you and the person overtaking). Something that is practically non-existant in Ireland.

The swedes know, if somebody is coming faster from behind and generally move out of the way.

Until that awareness and common courtesy in Ireland exists, it's obviously wreckless to try pushing through anyhow.



/M

B11gt00e

AlanD wrote: »

This is something that used to happen all the time years ago before we got a better standard of main roads around the country.

If you remember the places where we used to pass out cars before, it was just crazy driving! Our perception of what was safe was vastly different to our perception today.

For example, anyone remember the stretch of road coming in to Ballybrittas on the old N7. Just as you passed the Montague hotel. In relative terms it was a big wide road and as soon as drivers got there, drivers went nuts! Regardless of whether there was traffic coming or not, people passed out. So you'd have guys "semitaking" as you describe it, at every opportunity. Any space was a space to be used it seemed. I remember seeing on several occasions a car passing out a car who was passing out a car who was passing out a car. 4 abreast. It seemed normal at the time of course!

So "semitaking" may seem new. It's not, it's just that most sane folks don't do it any more.

Nice post. Totally agree with all you say. Anyone driving a long time will have noticed how new infrastrucure and policy has calmed some of those crazier parts of the national roads, as well as calming us as drivers.

Good drivers are always evolving. The more accidents and incidents you witness, added to more time on the road helps you to become aware.


Times change and so do our habits.

There's a lot of VERY wide single carriageways in this country with hard shoulders. Like Anan1 says, if ya stay left the incident isn't so hairy.

If I'm on a nice piece of primary roads and I see someone blazing up behind me in the rearview, I just pull in a bit, and let him blaze by... No harm done, off he goes, flishy-flash of the hazards from him, flash from me... and off he goes. No panic.

If I see that oncoming traffic is moving fast as he's executing the move, then I give him more room, to make sure everybody's going home safe.

There's a time an a place... I see fools executing these moves through white lined junction markings for right-turns/left-turn-oncoming and in other inappropriate oportunities and you can throw the book at them!

There's some nice roads out there at the moment and arond the M-fiddy we've got some nice free flow interchanges really sprucing the whole joint up. Hopefully we can all up our driving game a bit so that we can collectively enjoy getting from place to place efficiently.

Doesn't anybody recall that the whole 'BOOM' was a Fncking Traffic Jam.

I'm lovin' the roads the days.:pac:

Stark

"Semitaking" is common enough in a lot of countries where drivers in both directions know to pull into the left to make room for cars to overtake in the middle. I remember getting a bus ride in Turkey and the bus driver would frequently overtake slow moving cars with oncoming traffic and the oncoming traffic would pull over. Similar thing in other Asian countries. It's not something I'd try in Ireland though where oncoming traffic wouldn't be expecting it.

There are a lot of roads in Ireland actually where "semitaking" is potentially quite safe and feasible due to the lanes on either side being almost two car widths wide, but as Anan said, you get the idiots hugging the centre line preventing this.

rubensni

weeder wrote: »

have had this done to me a few times over the past year when i was on a motorbike that wasnt fast enough for them, always just after the arklow bypass heading towards redcross, scary stuff. was arctic lorry did it to me one day, oncoming traffic and all, flat out on a tdr125 and slowed down a bit on the incline and the lorry went for it. then he slowed down and i was stuck behind him the whole way to my turn off at the beehive

Now you're talking. People will pass you whenever they get a chance when you're on a bike, irrespective of the conditions and what's coming against you (and them) and always ON BENDS as that's the only time a car will catch a bike.

Attitude seems to be in the car behind that if there's a gap, then go for it, but when you're cornering on a bike you position yourself to use the road through a bend and not for the benefit of the guy behind to pass.

Raiser

Turkish Bus Drivers?

Oncoming Traffic ideally "expecting" Folks to suddenly nip across the white line and into your path for a crafty and daring break?

"Idiots" hugging the while line?

....

First off there's a huge difference between a Driver momentarily pulling into the hard shoulder as a courtesy to leave some wife-beating, urine-stained Moron tailgate the car ahead of them and the situation where Wife-beater decides to suddenly force their way between two streams of lethally fast moving traffic in order to potentially save themselves 3 minutes on their "Gold Medal Sales Rep - South West 1999" journey.

Too true - why isn't there an IQ test as part of the licensing system?

- The problem is that ANYONE can drive a car in this Country, think of the thickest, most ignorant, fcuk headed Dope you ever met - HE is probably driving somewhere right now, 6 inches behind some poor family and wishing he was in Turkey.....

1948Wolseley

Raiser wrote: »

Turkish Bus Drivers?

Oncoming Traffic ideally "expecting" Folks to suddenly nip across the white line and into your path for a crafty and daring break?

"Idiots" hugging the while line?

....

Steady on, I was just pointing out that that's how the system works in Turkey, and if you don't follow it, it's highly likely that you'll end up with a big, Fiat 131-shaped hole in your face.

Tea drinker

Raiser wrote: »

First off there's a huge difference between a Driver momentarily pulling into the hard shoulder as a courtesy to leave some wife-beating, urine-stained Moron tailgate the car ahead of them and the situation where Wife-beater decides to suddenly force their way between two streams of lethally fast moving traffic in order to potentially save themselves 3 minutes on their "Gold Medal Sales Rep - South West 1999" journey.
.....

Yeah, I don't understand these unnecessarily HEROIC overtaking manoevers myself. I also don't understand why people are giving you sh1t about whitelines, and pulling on to the hard shoulder which I thought was now illegal here if not in Sweden?
The fvck who drives like that needs his car rolled into a tree before he puts someone else there.