Can Lorries Overtake on the Motorway?

It's not been mentioned yet, but there are huge sections of 2 lane Autobahn in Germany, with no speed limit, and in a considerable number of places, there are blanket bans on the use of the overtaking lane by ANY vehicle over 3.5 tonnes, and those restrictions are for significant distances, there are sections of the autobahn from Munich to Salzburg where this restriction is in place for 50 or 60 Kilometers at a time, partly because of the gradients, and partly because of the different rules in respect to speed limits, there are NO upper limits in some of those sections, so it's very possible to have vehicles travelling at 150 Kph or more, and coming up on a rolling road block of HGV's doing 80 or 90 Kph (or less on some of the longer hills) is not a nice experience if your moving at high speed.

That said, the discussion here is an academic exercise, as there's NO realistic enforcement of any of the rules other than speed limits for cars, despite motorways being the safest road types. I came back to Dublin last night from Clare, and in the space of less than 10 miles, at 20:30, was affected by a number of incidents.

The first could have been nasty, a relatively new van, with headlights on, but NO working lights on the rear, no red lights, or number place lights, so not exactly clearly visible at that time of day. Flashed the lights a couple of times before passing it, and then having passed it, did what I could to try and let the driver know that there was nothing working on the back of his vehicle, (turned ALL my lights on and off several times) but it made no difference. A couple of miles later, as I'm passing a junction at 120 Kph, a car comes down the on ramp, and goes straight from the on ramp into lane 2, at about 50 to 60, even though there was no traffic or obstruction in lane 1. Not exactly a nice experience, given the difference in relative speeds. A bit further on, a van passes me doing about 130, then pulls back into Lane 1 in front of me, and then brakes in order to make the exit at a slip that was on his left, which again required some "avoiding action". Further up, had another "joiner" do something similar to the previous one, and then there was the section from Naas to Dublin, where I could have stayed in Lane 1 doing 100 all the way to Dublin, if it hadn't been for the procession of morons in lane 2 doing 90 and ignoring an empty lane on their left.

OK, part of the issue is that there are some cars out there where the accuracy of the speedo is highly questionable, and if you don't have a means to check it, that's a problem, which does result in a lot of people doing an indicated 100 Kph, but in some cases, their true speed is only about 92, I've checked a number of vehicles using GPS and measured distance covered, the worst in that respect was one in the UK where the indicated was 70 Mph, but the true speed was 56 Mph, and one of our vehicles here, to get a true speed of 120 Kph, the indicated has to be 130, and I know that's accurate based on GPS checking (more than one gps to be sure, and verified using distance covered, which is easy with the marker posts on the motorways these days. There are supposedly legal limits for speedo accuracy, but I have to wonder if those limits are being abused by the manufacturers in much the same way as we've seen in recent weeks with the emissions controls, if the vehicle isn't doing the speed that it indicates, that makes the fuel consumption figures look better than they really are, and not many drivers are going to check that they've actually covered the distance relative to their speed on a longer journey, even though it can make a significant difference to the overall journey time, though that's not often the case in Ireland, the distances are so much shorter, and there's not that many long motorways. On a trip that's perhaps 800 Kilometers, the difference between 105 and 120 Kph can mean a substantial difference in the total journey time.

Even allowing for that issue, that doesn't explain or justify the number of lane hoggers, or the number that come down a slip and ignore the line at the end that indicates that traffic already on the motorway has right of way, and is NOT obliged to let them in regardless, and there's even less excuse for the people that go from the slip straight in to the right hand lanes at less than the road speed limit.

And yes, there's NO chance of any realistic enforcement action against the HGV rolling road blocks that happen every day, even though they are a major problem at some times of the day, especially during the busier peak periods.

I'd be reluctant to let learners on the motorways before they've passed a competency test, simply because the speeds are higher, and in the early stages, learners have not developed the skills needed to recognise the differences in technique that higher speeds require, that only comes with some driving experience, though from what I see here, some drivers never develop those skills, the new N plates may help there, in that hopefully, if an N driver is on a motorway, they will be given some leeway, but I might be being over optimistic there as well.