Is the Overtake Even Worth It?

Here's a piece of reasoning most drivers never work through — and it's worth doing once, so the logic sticks: overtaking usually saves far less time than it feels like it should.

The rough rule: at highway speeds above roughly 90 km/h, increasing your speed by 10 km/h gains you about 30 seconds over a 10 km stretch. Below that speed, the same increase gains closer to a full minute over 10 km.

Worked example: at 100 km/h, speeding up to 110 to force an overtake saves roughly 33 seconds over the next 10 km. That's the entire benefit — weighed against a manoeuvre that puts you head-on into the opposing lane, behind a vehicle that might stop without warning, past a gap that might not be as clear as it looks.

The point isn't "never overtake." It's that the actual time saved is almost always smaller than the risk feels like it should justify — worth remembering the next time an overtake feels urgent rather than genuinely necessary. Urgency is a feeling; 33 seconds is a number.