Night riding behind an erratic taxi with an oncoming LED bar

Minimum three seconds, ideally four, and you should be able to say what that is in metres.

• The dry-weather bare minimum is two seconds. At night, behind a vehicle whose brake lights are flickering and which has already crossed the barrier line twice, two seconds is not enough. Three to four seconds gives you time to react to a brake light that comes on while you are still recovering from oncoming glare.
• At 70 km/h the bike covers about 19,4 m every second. Three seconds is roughly 58 m; four seconds is roughly 78 m. Pick a fixed object - a road sign, a marking - and count the time between the taxi passing it and you passing it.
• Why not just "two chevrons"? Markings are often faint, as here, and other drivers treat the gap as an invitation to pull into it.

Practical consequences:

1. If a car overtakes you and dives into your three-second gap, drop back and rebuild it rather than tailgating.
2. Use the extra gap to look past the taxi, not at it - you want to see the road the taxi is about to react to.
3. Stay roughly in the centre-left of your lane, not hugging the ditch side, so you keep a usable escape path to the right if the taxi brakes hard.

Never look at the light. Look at the edge of the road you can actually see.

1. Avert your gaze to the left edge line and the shoulder. Your eyes are drawn to the brightest thing in the frame; consciously move your focus to the left-hand edge of your lane. Use that edge as your steering reference until the vehicle has passed.
2. Slow down to the distance you can see to be clear. If glare blanks out 40 m of road, your speed must let you stop within 40 m, not the 100 km/h the sign allows. On a 35 W halogen the unlit road beyond the LED bar is effectively invisible.
3. Do not stare, do not retaliate with main beam. Flashing back escalates and blinds a driver who is now sharing your lane width on a bend.
4. Hold your line, slightly left of centre but clear of the ditch. Do not swerve left into the unlit shoulder; there is a drop-off there, and a pedestrian or cyclist without a light is a real possibility.
5. Cover the brakes and expect the oncoming driver to be over the centre line. On a left-hand bend, an oncoming vehicle cutting the corner appears in your lane first.

The rule to state in the test: you must be able to stop within the distance you can see to be clear. Glare reduces that distance, so glare reduces your speed.

Stop now, at the first safe place - not at the next town.

The symptoms listed are the textbook early-to-mid stage of drowsy riding: yawning, slow blinking, and - most seriously - losing track of the last few kilometres. That last one is a micro-sleep or a blank period, not ordinary tiredness. At 70 km/h a three-second lapse covers about 58 m of road with nobody steering.

What to do:

1. Identify a safe stopping point that is lit and off the roadway - a fuel station forecourt or a farm stall with parking, not the gravel shoulder next to a ditch.
2. Get off the bike, remove your helmet, walk around, drink water and if available a caffeinated drink. Give it 15–20 minutes.
3. Be honest about the test: caffeine takes roughly 20–30 minutes to act and does not cure sleep debt. If you are still yawning and your eyelids are heavy, you are not fit to ride the remaining 45 km.
4. Have a realistic alternative ready - call someone, wait it out, or sleep. A 45 km ride that ends in a ditch is not a saving.

Why not "push on and ride slower"? Fatigue impairs judgement and reaction time in a way you cannot compensate for by throttling back, and the taxi ahead of you is already an unpredictable hazard. The correct exam answer - and the correct real-world one - is to stop.