Three Warning Signs Before a Bend at Night
At 21:15 you are driving a private car on a single-carriageway highway with no street lighting, visibility reduced to roughly 50 metres by harmattan haze. You are doing 90 km/h. Within one kilometre you pass three signs: a triangle bearing a winding-road symbol; then a triangle showing a car with wavy skid marks beneath its wheels; then, on the outside of a curve, a board carrying three black chevrons pointing left. Just past the chevrons a tanker is overtaking a slow lorry, and its headlights are already on your side of the road about 150 metres ahead. Your headlights are on dipped beam, the windscreen is filming over with dust, and a passenger in the back is not belted.
1. What are the three signs telling you, individually and together, and how should your speed have changed before you reached the chevrons?
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Each sign carries a different piece of the picture:
- Winding road - a series of curves lies ahead, not one gentle bend.
- Slippery road - the surface has reduced grip: spilled diesel, loose gravel, rain, or a polished surface. Braking and steering forces must be reduced.
- Chevron board - marks the outside of the curve and shows its direction and severity. It is a guide to the shape of the road, not permission to take it quickly.
Together they describe a curve that is both tight and low-grip. At 90 km/h with 50 m of visibility you were already overdriving your headlights: your stopping distance exceeds the distance you can see. The correct response was to lift off and brake progressively while the car was still straight, arriving at the sign at a speed from which you can stop within the visible distance - well below 90 km/h - and only then steering into the curve.
2. The tanker is in your lane about 150 metres ahead and closing. What do you do in the next few seconds?
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Brake firmly and progressively, keep left, and make yourself obvious: flash the headlights and sound the horn so the tanker driver registers you. Do not:
- swerve right - that is the lane the lorry being overtaken occupies, and you would meet it head-on;
- assume the shoulder is clear and dive onto it at speed - a soft verge or a parked vehicle will roll the car;
- accelerate to 'get past' the gap, which shortens the time everyone has to react.
Plan on the tanker not finishing the overtake. That means being ready to stop, or to leave the carriageway deliberately and slowly onto the verge if stopping distance runs out. Once the tanker has pulled back in, resume normal speed gradually. Also have the rear passenger belt up at the first safe stop - an unbelted body becomes a projectile in exactly this kind of emergency braking.
3. The car stalls 40 metres after the bend and will not restart. Where do you stop it and how do you set out the warning triangle?
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Get the car as far off the carriageway as the verge allows, wheels straight, hazard lights on, handbrake set, and side lights on if the battery allows. Passengers out through the doors away from the traffic and behind the barrier or off the road entirely, standing upslope of the car - never in the lane, never behind the boot.
The triangle goes upstream on the same side, far enough back that a driver at highway speed sees it, reads it and picks a new line: the commonly taught figure is about 45 metres, and at night on a fast road further is better. Because the bend hides the car, place it before the curve if you can do so safely, so the first warning a driver gets is the triangle rather than a stationary car. Walk facing the traffic, wear something bright, and never stand between the triangle and the car.