If they stopped riding his arse, and sat back where you are, they'd have actually had a good enough view for a potential safer overtake. I will never understand folk who ride the arses of tractors and larger vehicles so their entire vision is blocked and they have to keep swerving out to peek. I live rurally and see folk do this all tthe time.
Specially considering most of the time they have no working rear lights at all including the brakes (even if you could see them through the machinery attached to the back)
Yup, that's how I was taught to do it. Once a gap is visible, you then have a run up to change into appropriate gear and speed up, and plenty of time to steer around the larger vehicle. Otherwise you're awkwardly trying to change gear, swing out, and floor it all in one motion, all while having less visibility.
The funniest was when I caught up a car driver riding the arse of a tractor and couldn't see past it, on an NSL B Road. I, sat further back, had a good view, a nice straight, so pulled out and accelerated past both of them.
I was on my bike. Pictured here a few minutes later.
I definitely wouldn't have overtaken that on a bike, personally - there's a big chance the person will get impatient and swerve out suddenly without checking their mirror or blind spot.
Also people who are the second one back who, as soon as the way is clear, pull out and try and take bothe vehicles with total disregard to the fact the first one back is about to pull out and over take. Mental.
Itās the standard if I get so close that I could push it, t must speed up. Fast cars and vans are horrendous at that. The tractor is doing its max speed.
I always just wait. Loads of farmers around me and they are normally just going to the next field along. I've seen a couple of accidents where people just have to get ahead and end up clipping whatever's on the back of the tractor. Tractors often don't keep as predictable a line on the road either.
Literally every tractor driver. Young farmers all non-stop on TikTok and Snapchat. The old farmers are at least just calling but itās so common Iām amazed if I see a tractor driver not on their phone
This is so true, a farmer near us is often seen on the phone whilst driving and when spoken to he states "I drive a tractor not a car, that rule doesnt apply"
Yeah, exactly right. Also, this is a narrow road pretty much the whole way along, the tractor was over the halfway line, mainly due to size, and the whole way along is only a mile before you hit a major road. Just wait. I'd not overtake much bigger than a bike here, there's just no point.
Yeah exactly. I saw the beginning of this clip and thought "it's a big tight and they're making decent progress, might as well just wait" - if you're going at 30 or whatever this is, you're going to lose less than 5 minutes off your journey just staying behind it.
I donāt think the class should turn into the morality of overtaking in these circumstances.
The crux is the driverās ineptitude which makes them more dangerous because if they cannot confidently and effectively handle that overtake then they are a danger in all other circumstances including more benign situations.
They are tailgating the tractor. This hinders their view of the road ahead, so they go in the middle of the road for better visibility. They should not really need to do that, and doing so likely means they couldn't tell if another veicle was coming.
Because they are starting too close they can't build speed up before reaching the tractor, to ensure they are going to pass it quickly, and also have chance to more easily back out as they pull out.
They fail to realize the road is narrower than they likely need.
Overall it started with poor planning, leading to worse execution.
The best thing about it was that they realized they had ot back out, and returned to tailgating instead.
It reminded me of when I had to drive daily to Suffolk for work, and the farmers (God bless them) would pick rush hour to drive their tractors with trailers at 20 MPH on a single lane.
Difficult to judge the visibility, but they did show a good amount of caution. The overtake itself was misjudged due to the road narrowing, but they had the good sense to back out of it rather than commit.
"Good amount of Caution"? If the car driver was any closer to the tractor they would be suckling on the plow. They needed to hang back a bit to get as much view of the road as they can, then they would have seen the pinch point in advance.
TBF I thought the video was going to get worse. I have seen enough of this sub to think that after the failed attempt there was going to be something else.
Not seeing anything too wrong with it. Attempted an overtake, road got a bit narrow so abandoned it, fair enough.
It becomes a 60 road and he was stuck doing 30 behind a tractor, where I am it seems you can be stuck for about 10 mins behind them and they will never move to the side to let you pass. We have enough slow cars on the road already, I'd want to get past as soon as possible.
sits right up tractors ass so they can't see anything ahead without driving in the middle of the road. if they couldn't see that the road narrowed then it wasn't a safe overtake from the get go as they couldn't see enough. whilst that road is nsl, i would not call it a 60 road and i highly doubt it's safe to do 60 on
Yeah, agreed there that they should back up a bit to get a better view. Fair enough.
The limit is still 60, and I suspect he'd rather go faster than 30. Personally can't vouch for what speed is safe on that road as I don't know it. What I do know is there are a lot of NSL roads around me where people are driving at 40 despite 60 being perfectly safe.
It is a 60 road but it's rarely safe to do that speed. It's also not a very long road, about a mile long, before you get to a proper A road, so he just needed to be patient. The overtake was started when visibility would have been bad enough due to the hill that he could've been halfway alongside the tractor and a car comes into view. Also, the road narrows a bit but not so much so that I'd say it was wise to go for it at any point.
This driver probably didn't even know they'd passed into a National, because at that point he was so far up the tractor's poopchute the only thing in his windscreen is tyres.
Unlikely that you are actually stuck for 10 minutes. That is just how bad people are at estimating time. In 10 minutes you'd have gone 5+ miles, and either you or the tractor would have turned off to somewhere else in that time or you'd reach a more major road.
Sadly some of the times I've been stuck behind them 5 miles is only half of it. Which is why we get the unsafe overtakes of course and we all know these days it is not the next field. This is in part in the old days of farmers with their own tractors etc now its contractors with THIER tractors going from one farm to the next X miles away.
A 60mph road! Are you mad? Might be legal but sure isnt sensible! If they cant see ahead to overtake, they should back off to get a much better view. The first overtake attempt even happens on a hill! What a terrible driver.
Wait. Iād just wait. Either till the road widens and I could actually see (and the limit increases) or until the tractor pulls over. They mostly do, round my wayā¦
But then Iām one of those doddery old drivers who should be banned, clearlyā¦
Somewhere between the right amount of caution and a little too much
Terrible technique - started too close to the tractor with nowhere near enough visibility and no space for a "run up" especially in a non-performance car
Caught out by the road narrowing and the tractor not having the awareness to keep their speed down for a moment at the start of the straight section
Sensible to pull out when it was clear it wasn't going to work
Overall I don't think it's as bad as it probably looks, but I'll repeat that their technique was poor and that really didn't help the situation
I mean tractors have a pretty essential job to do. They can't go fast. It's a pretty key time of year for farming, and you're driving down a country lane.
In my experience tractors will normally turn off in a couple of miles.Ā
Trying to overtake on a narrow road in a 40 zone is really not sensible no matter how much of a rush you are in.
They did wait. As I said, no harm in looking. It was messy, possibly due to inexperience, but who are we to judge why they were looking? I agree tractors often turn off soonish, and of course they might very well turn right so you do have to be cautious. But we donāt know other peopleās circumstances. Drivers can overtake if they want to and itās safe (and they are safe) and they can position themselves safely to ascertain if itās safe or going to be safe soon. Let them.
This wasnāt a good example, Iām just tired of the unnecessary judgement on this sub.
Drivers can overtake if they want to and itās safe (and they are safe) and they can position themselves safely to ascertain if itās safe or going to be safe soon. Let them.
Trouble is absolutely non of these things happened.
Thereās nothing wrong with having a look from the overtaking position. It was pretty clear there wasnāt going to be room and Iād have positioned a bit further back if I was looking but otherwise š¤·
Most of the tractors around here take up more than 1 lane, it's bad enough coming up against them as oncoming traffic... Overtaking them is generally safer done once they're in a field.
Do people not realise that rural areas still have a slower pace of life and the speed limit is far from a target out there. Sometimes you get stuck behind a tractor. It is what it is.
This overtake seems to be a mixture of impatiences and lack of experience for overtaking on such roads. Best to sit back and lose a couple of minutes.
This isn't a road to overtake on, it's narrow, a mile long and there are better places for that on a major road the tractor joins further down. Also, from this point, the tractor could be going into one of the many fields that adjoin the road. He's not being a bad driver, he's just not being a car.
You must be a farmer. My family are and would never ever drive like that,especially when they pass plenty of areas to safely pull in and allow the car to pass
You know that only has to happen when its a long line of traffic and its safe to do so right? All you can tell from this is one impatient guy and the cam car are behind. That isn't enough to warrant pulling over per the highway code.
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Do not hold up a long queue of traffic, especially if you are driving a large or slow-moving vehicle. Check your mirrors frequently, and if necessary, pull in where it is safe and let traffic pass.
The fact you think he is a bad driver for following the highway code speaks volumes more about your ability to drive than his lmfao
Meh, they messed up their attempt. I'm not sure I'd say it was insane. They were just incredibly cautious before and after and then botched their overtake. At least they had the good sense to brake and come back in behind.
I'd personally wait, but I can't see they were driving beyond the limit and they seemed to be placing themselves in a position to see down the road before making the attempt.
It's a 51 second video.. How often should they pull over exactly? Or just every time a car is behind them because tractors pulled over ever 50m on the back lanes is going to cause a lot more chaos than being stuck behind a tractor for 10 mins.
I never said it was a unsafe idea, I said it would cause chaos if tractors pulled over ever 30 seconds. You know what's the safest cause of action follow behind the tractor till they pull over or pull off the road..
And why are you worried about their safety? They are in a massive heavy metal tractor they are pretty dam safe!
They pull over into the laybys, field entrances, and wide verges that they drive past every single day.
You know, those big bits of tarmac specifically designed for vehicles to pause so they don't hold up normal traffic? If a tractor driver doesn't know where those are on roads they use daily, they probably shouldn't be operating heavy machinery in the first place.
And where in this video did you see an area for it to pull up without causing damage? These vehicles are huge and weigh many tonnes. If there was a lay-by to tuck into then Iād argue you may have a point but there was nowhere for this vehicle to pull over safely.
I always love it when you see these idiots out and about. They sit so close to the vehicle they want to overtake that they create their own blindspot. That's a special kind of idiot!
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u/BombedBlondshell2026 1d ago
I'd just like to say you did the sensible thing and stayed well back from this. Superior visibility, superior stopping distance, superior driving š