“So you are driving along a road in Britain. What side of the road do you drive on? I think, by now, you’ll have established that you drive on the left in this country. That applies to whether you’re on a single carriageway or a dual carriageway or a motorway. The difference being with dual carriageways and motorways is there are several lanes to choose from.
So, lane one, lane two or lane three. There isn’t a fast lane, there isn’t a slow lane. It’s lanes one, two or three. So, pause here and then go and have a look in the Highway Code. See if you can find reference to which rules tell you where to be driving. Okay? We’re going to pause here.
And now we’re back. Well done for those people who got rule 160 for the general rule, drive on the left. Well done for that. There’s also a separate one, rule 264, which tells you to be driving in lane one on dual carriageways and motorways, referring to lane one as the one on the left with lane two as the one to the right of that and, for a three-lane motorway or dual carriageway, lane three is the outside lane, lane three.
So, you’re driving on the left, or lane one, unless road markings, road signs, a queue of traffic, debris on the road, broken down vehicles and so on. Unless those thing make lane one out of the question for you.
“So you’ve also got dual carriageways and motorways where you have overhead gantries and, if you can see, hopefully you’ll see this in the distance, because that’s where you should be looking and you can see a red cross over one of the lanes on the dual carriageway or motorway that you’re driving on.
That red cross means that that lane is closed ahead. You’ve got two options, you stay in that lane and pull up, which is not a very clever idea because somebody will drive up the back of you. The better option is to see the sign well ahead and change lanes into one of the active lanes.
In order to do that, you need to see that it’s safe to do so. You may think it’s obvious that you check in, say if you’re in lane one, you check in lane two, in lane three, see what’s going on so that you can move across. But remember to check between the lanes. Check between lanes one and two. Check between lanes two and three.
What are you looking for?
You’re looking for motorcycles and you’re looking for emergency vehicles that could be coming through. That red cross that’s closing your lane, it could indicate that there is a crash ahead. There’s an incident ahead which is closing the lane and it’s now likely, it’s certainly possible now, certainly likely, that emergency vehicles might be pulling through the traffic and, in the absence of any other way to get through, they will be coming between lane one and two and between lanes two and three.
So there you have it, drive on the left on a normal carriageway or motorway or other multi-lane road. Bear in mind, there are some reasons why you might have to get out of lane one; for overtaking and passing parked vehicles possibly and whatever. Get back into lane one, get back to the left as soon as you have done those.”
