Ok I work in a small town thats about 13 miles away from where I live. The vast majority of this journey is a single carriageway road that connects the two towns. Its busy most of the time but particularly commuter hours since people travel from one town to the other.
Its also fairly rural so you get farmers etc at times using the same road.
Its got 40mph at both ends and a small stretch of 40mph towards one end, rest is normal "60 mph" stuff. Its got some bendy bits and some long (2 mile plus straights).
Hopefully that sets the scene
Its also a regular for accidents, and I mean probably twice a month there will be a "proper incident" either closing the road in one/both directions or causing a serious delay.
So why do people have to overtake when its just not going to get them any significant reduction in journey time? I just do not get the thought process (or lack of imo) to overtake unless its clearly going to speed you along.
E.g last night I caught up to a chain of 3 cars following a lorry, who incidentally was making good progress, he wasn't hanging about. A minute or so later a blue 306 diesel catches me up who was clearly doing more like 70-80 than 60. He weaves a few times and eventually forces his way past me and swerves in front of me to avoid oncoming lorry

. Then sits in front of me for the rest of the journey, looking for a way past the car infront.
He put himself and me at risk overtaking for a gain of 20 feet of tarmac, he was clearly never going to get past all the cars and the lorry before we got to the 40 limit, as it was he gained nothing more than overtaking me and eventually went straight on at the end of the road when I turned right.
Its one of them roads thats just always going to catch you out, I have overtaken lorries etc myself when they are going slow and sooner or later you always seem to catch something else going slow, its too busy a road to expect to be able to get from end to end at a decent rate without interruption, yet people seem to have to keep trying to overtake. I have yet to see anyone overtake me who isnt within a car or two at the end of this piece of road, gaining them what, 10 seconds?
Any thoughts?, oh and sorry just wanted to get that off my chest

, spent a wasted hour stuck last week on friday night whilst the police and ambulance sorted what was clearly an overtaking maneauver gone wrong.
(Lots of yellow paint and skid marks from wrong side of road to right still exist)