Fleet Prevention Newsflash
Changing lanes and zipping
It’s always risky to change lanes or queues. This has been in the top 5 of damages to car fleets for years. What does the highway code say? And how can you adapt your driving style? We also give you a few additional useful tips.
Main rules
The main rule is clear: drivers must always keep to the furthest right lane on the road. In urban areas you often have free pick of lanes, and when you approach a roundabout you can freely get in lane.
From 1 September 2011 motorcycles can overtake the queues at a speed of maximum 50 km/h, providing that the speed difference with the cars they overtake does not exceed 20 km/h. Motorcycles wishing to overtake cars that drive too slow or are at a standstill must use the two furthest left lanes.
What else do you need to know?
- Changing lanes is always considered a manoeuvre. That means you always have to give way to the cars or other road users in the lane you want to join.
- Of course you can only change lanes if there is no solid white line painted on the road between the lanes.
- Always change lanes to overtake the car in front of you from the left hand side. Overtaking from the right is forbidden.
- When approaching a roundabout, you can change lanes if you are not on the roundabout yet and there are no solid white lines between the lanes.
Prepare your manoeuvre!
- Check there is enough room to insert your car between both cars.
- Adapt your speed to the cars driving in the lane you want to join.
- Look in your mirrors and check the road is free. Check that another car has not started the same manoeuvre to take the same free space. Check for possible oncoming motorcycles (between two lanes).
- Don’t just look in your mirrors, but also check the blind spots (both right and left).
- Use your indicators to announce your manoeuvre to other road users.
Zipping: do’s and don’ts
What do you do when you see an upcoming narrowing of the road in slowed down traffic and you are in the ‘wrong’ dead-end lane? You have to zip! The average driver then feels the urge to quickly join the ‘continuing’ lane, but that’s wrong! You burden that lane too quickly and slow down traffic even more that way. So what’s the right way?
- Stay in your lane as long as possible and only change lanes just before the narrowing of the road.
- The traffic in the continuing lane must give way in turn to a car joining the lane.
- To join the lane safely, you have to drive faster than the traffic in the other lanes from approximately 300 m before the narrowing.
- When several lanes are cancelled and merged in the central lane, the priority rule says that the car in the right lane is the first allowed to enter the lane, and the car in the left lane only after that.
- Do not zip at a give way sign!
- Driving onto a motorway is an insertion manoeuvre, and definitely not the right place for zipping. This means that the road users on the motorway always have priority.
Zipping is compulsory by law!
You commit a first degree offence in the following cases:
- not continuing driving up to the narrowing road
- preventing other vehicles from continuing driving to the narrowing road
- not allowing other vehicles to zip at the level of the narrowing road
A violation can lead to a fine of € 55.