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I can see why people think they need to speed to overtake a slower vehicle but If they're not going slow enough to be able to overtake easily, then where is the pressing need to get past them?
I'm not going to pretend that I've never done it myself however I don't think I'd ever have the cheek to try and justify it as somehow thinking of safety :-) As you say, these days I tend to just be patient and wait - I'll happily go slightly slower without working myself up in to a frothing Clarkson.
AlexD-
don't think I'd ever have the cheek to try and justify it as somehow thinking of safety :-)
I'm not trying to justify the overtake as being done for reasons of safety.
I'm saying, practically speaking, people are still going to overtake other people. Hitting a limiter when overtaking is dangerous because it elongates the length of time spent in oncoming traffic. Being able to apply more speed to reduce that time is safer than not being able to.
Soul
Colliding with an oncoming car is bad, so people want to minimise the amount of time they're in the wrong lane, hence they go faster than the speed limit during the overtake.
What is supposed to happen is the lorry driver doing 10 mph below the speed limit pulls over to allow the long queue of people behind him to pass. But unfortunately they are incentivised to never stop by their employers.
(On the very rare occasions that I drive these days, if I'm behind someone slow I sit and wait, like you suggest, after the speed camera incident I mentioned above.)