Having often lived near, and therefore driven along, single-track roads with passing places, I am in a position to state that the most dangerous creatures you will find on or near them are people who do not know how to drive along single-track roads with passing places.
Some of them are city folk who have never experienced such things before, which I am grudgingly prepared to accept is fair enough, though it would surely make sense to do some research before travelling to a part of the world liberally supplied with them.
Others, sadly, are people who have lived in those areas all their lives, and have either never bothered to learn or are convinced that the roads were constructed simply for them to drive on, and that anyone else who has the effrontery to do the same thing can damn well get out of their way.
For those who don’t already know, here are some rules about the use of passing places which you might find helpful in future. The first one is based on the assumption that the road is in the UK. If it’s in any country where cars drive on the right, it should be reversed.
Keep to the left. Passing places can be on either the right or the left of the road, as seen from your car. If you stop to allow another car coming the other way to pass you, and the passing place is on the left, pull into it. If it’s on the right, stay on the road and stop next to it. If you drive into one on the right and the other driver does the same because it’s on their left and they realise that’s where they should go, it could lead to an increase in entropy and a testy exchange of insurance details. (I break this rule, signalling that I am going to do so well in advance, if the oncoming vehicle is a lorry or a large bus, since they are difficult to manoeuvre into and back out of passing places.)
Allow the driver behind to pass. The whole point of passing places is to maintain the traffic flow. One car delaying the progress of another doesn’t help anyone, so if you notice someone coming up behind you, pull in at the first convenient opportunity, allow them to overtake and then proceed as before. In the opposite situation, you will probably find that the faster the car ahead is moving, the more likely it is that its driver will pull over. If you are averaging, say, forty miles per hour along the road in question, and the driver in front is averaging thirty-five, they will be aware of the situation, understand the importance of traffic flow and pull over. If they are averaging twenty-five or less, they are probably paying no attention to what is going on, and will be unaware of your existence until you overtake them when the road at last becomes wide enough to make this possible.
Do not stop if the other driver has already stopped. The driver of a car sees another car approaching and pulls into a passing place. The driver of the other car, who must have seen this happen, then does the same. Both cars are now stationary, and the traffic flow has been reduced to zero. The driver of the second car has ruined everything. Don’t be that guy.
Non-human animals also present a challenge on single-track roads. They are plentiful in the mostly rural areas where passing places are to be found, and they react in different ways to your arrival. At night, foxes, badgers and rabbits will run from your car in the direction they can see most clearly, and since your headlights are illuminating the road ahead that is where they will go rather than dodging out of the way. If you find yourself in this situation, there is nothing for it but to stop, switch your headlights off (leaving the sidelights on so anyone else who arrives will notice you) and wait for them to leave the tarmac when the idea finally occurs to them.
Deer, I have found, will jump off the road as soon as they can, but if they land in difficult undergrowth and can’t get a secure footing they will have no option but to jump back on it, perhaps right in front of you. Assume that a deer which has just gone out of sight will return almost immediately, and stop the car for a few seconds in case it does.
If you’re wondering why we are now past the halfway point of an article titled Nine sheep and no sheep have yet been mentioned, don’t worry. From now on, we will be speaking of little else.
Individually, sheep do not seem to be particularly afraid of cars. If you see one grazing on the verge beside the road, you can drive straight past it without causing any apparent concern, though it’s best to do this slowly, to be on the safe side. If there are multiple sheep and one of them moves, the flocking instinct takes over and the others will follow it, even if this means running in front of your car. You know and I know that immediate confusion and peril will ensue, but try explaining that to a sheep.
Remarkably complex situations can arise, as I am only too well aware. Several years ago, I was driving along a single-track road from my very remote home (the only other house I could see from it was on an island four miles away) towards the nearest city. Early in the journey I came near a lone sheep which looked up to see what the noise was about, caught sight of two other sheep nearby and began running towards them. They began running too. Other sheep in the area saw what was happening and joined in.
It got to the point where I was driving far more slowly than would have been the case if no sheep were present, being careful not to run into the back of a small flock which now consisted of nine sheep and wondering how, when and indeed if this would ever end.
One of the sheep, I noticed, seemed to be thinking that, although what it was doing felt natural, there must surely be a better alternative. It kept looking for escape routes, and eventually found one in the form of a passing place. It ran into that, and its three closest companions followed.
I was now inadvertently chasing five sheep, which still wasn’t how I wanted to spend my day but seemed preferable to inadvertently chasing nine sheep. Unfortunately, at this point the flocking instinct once again overcame the four sheep in the passing place. Seeing five other sheep running ahead, they tried to catch up with them, which they couldn’t do because the car I was driving was in the way.
In this new situation, I was once again chasing nine sheep, except this time five of them were in front of me and four were behind. In other words – and I think even the Monty Python team might have dismissed the idea as being too fanciful – the ones at the back were attempting to avoid danger by running straight towards it. They were chasing what they were being chased by. They were trying to overtake the thing they were running away from.
The matter was resolved only when the leading sheep darted into a farm road and the others, naturally, followed. I accelerated away quickly, then looked in the rear-view mirror and saw that all nine of them were now calmly munching grass. They seemed to have forgotten the whole incident, something I don’t think I will ever be able to do.
I arrived in the city later than planned, and tried to explain the reason for this to the people I was meeting. They said they understood, but I don’t think they did.
Top image by Keith Weller
Public domain
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