Bypassing means

Explanation

Passing means getting ahead of another vehicle without leaving the lane you occupy.

Passing means getting ahead of another vehicle without leaving your own lane. Its difference from "overtaking" is fundamental: overtaking is done by leaving the occupied lane and usually entails entering the opposing lane or another lane.

The technical importance of this distinction lies in the restrictions. All the law's heavy prohibitions — on bridges, in tunnels, at level crossings and 100 metres before them, at pedestrian crossings, on dangerous bends, at the end of an uphill stretch and wherever a "no overtaking" sign is posted — relate to overtaking, because overtaking occupies a lane that is not yours and cuts across others' paths. But passing is the ordinary flow of traffic: on a multi-lane street, when your car moves faster in its own lane than the car in the adjacent one, you have blocked no path and occupied no new lane. So overtaking's strict rules do not attach to it, although the safe following distance and the ban on sudden lane changes still apply.

• Leaving the occupied lane is the definition of "overtaking", not passing; the two are separate terms in law with separate rules.

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