Speed Considerations on a Motorway. Section 3 

Your Cruising speed will depend on the prevailing weather, road and traffic conditions. Where possible you should build up your speed to the speed limit promptly and smoothly and position yourself in the left hand lane except when there is slower traffic in the road ahead of you and you plan to overtake.

Weather conditions play a big part in choosing your correct safe speed. Heavy rain and poor light conditions mean you should reduce your average speed considerably to give you more time to think and react in an emergency.

 Windy conditions, which are very common on exposed stretches of Motorway even in fine weather present a major hazard for any driver experienced or not and your speed should be substantially reduced. You might think that you are driving at a safe speed, having taken in to account the ambient wind speed but remember that gusts of wind, traveling much faster than the general conditions can whip across the road and take you with them very easily and without warning.

Being overtaken is a fact of life on a Motorway journey and therefore it is essential to know the correct procedures and to recognise drivers who don’t! I think the greatest problem that we face when we are being overtaken is the fact that many Drivers will be exceeding the speed limit, sometimes substantially! Why is this a problem for you? Well a Driver, like the Leopard, doesn’t change his or her spots and someone who is capable of breaking the speed limit and the law is equally capable of doing just about everything else in a cockeyed manner

You are being overtaken by a speeding driver …your main concern therefore is what is going on ahead of you.  If there is a hazard ahead, for example a closure of the fast lane due to road works or a normal reduction of the number of lanes due to the ending of that section of motorway then that Driver about to fly past you could well run out of road and the only place he can go is to cut across in front of you. Providing you have read the situation well by your observation and reactions you can totally dissipate the danger by a smart reduction in speed to allow the errant driver into your space

However remember every time you are reacting to an emergency or hazardous situation of this sort there will be other drivers behind you that will not anticipate you’re slow down and so by helping to rectify a serious mistake by one driver you can inadvertently create a similar situation for another. One way of alerting an unsuspecting driver behind you, who perhaps is driving too close to you is to touch the foot brake very lightly on and off before you commence your serious braking. This should alert the car behind you that you are about to reduce speed even if they are unaware of what is happening in the fast lane with the speeding driver.

An alternative in a really high speed instantaneous situation that develops out of no where, is to  use your hazard warning lights as you give your brake warning. Flashing lights, be they the Red of Brake Lights or the Yellow of Hazard warning indicators usually have a significant wake-up effect on a driver who is either unskilled, half asleep or just not taking enough care