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Ronan's report

Driving on gravel may seem like a strange topic for an FP, but it's relevant in as much as I prefer to arrive at my fishing spot alive. Quite a few places I fish involve driving on gravel or metalled roads for some distance, and I've recently had some ... interesting ... experiences.

I'm not the best qualified person to be holding forth on driving. For reasons of poverty and then health it was 17 years between getting my learner's license and the intermediate stage of my driving license a few months back. However I did grow up and learn to drive on an island with lots of gravel roads. Our own road was unsealed until just before we left. I've also spent a lot of time on forestry roads and such when mountain biking.

In lots of ways the things I'm going to talk about are just common sense, but unfortunately common sense doesn't seem to get applied as often as it should.

Around here there seems be two types of drivers you particularly need to be wary of. The first is some (not all!) guys in big 4WDs. I'm thinking Isuzu Bighorns, big old Nissan Safaris, Landcruisers, Landrovers, that sort of thing. These guys seem to think they own the road and despite being in a pretty serious 4WD they expect everyone else to make room for them. I met a guy coming round a corner on a single lane gravel road a few weeks ago in a Landcruiser. There was a grassy side bit with quite a high edge one of us could pull up on. Of course it was me in the mid-size 4WD (I drive a Subaru Forester) who ended up doing it. It was even worse on the island I used to live on. A lot of the roads were narrow and had deep ditches. If a small 2WD met a large 4WD it was almost always the 2WD who ended up halfway down the ditch. People with vehicles you could climb mountains in wouldn't even shift over.

The other people to look out for are those in ordinary cars, often tourists heading down an interesting looking road. They're a worry for all sorts of reasons, but the main one is they often aren't used to gravel roads. They either dawdle or drive way too fast. You have to take extra care to move over if you meet them, especially because they won't want to get close to the side themselves. Fortunately they mainly seem confined to holiday times or weekends.

A lot of people drive on gravel roads like they're the only ones on it. I guess because the road is out in the middle of nowhere it seems unlikely that anyone else would be there. Of course if they're heading there to fish chances are good someone else might have had the same idea. Around where I live many of the gravel roads are there to service big farms, often called "stations" in the South Island of NZ, and so at odd times you might meet a double trailer stock truck on a blind corner or a farmer blazing along in his pickup. The fact is you never know what might be around the next corner, and as fun as it is to 4 wheel drift round them you always have to assume something is coming the other way.

Forestry roads need particular care. As rough as the roads are those logging trucks don't hang about. The way I've seen some drive it seems they know they aren't going to meet trucks coming the opposite way. They don't know about you though. Even the biggest 4WD is going to come off second best in an argument with even an empty one. Speaking of logging trucks, one road (not a forest road) near me is particularly bad for logging trucks taking a shortcut. Unfortunately these drivers don't seem too bothered about anyone else on the road and we've had a couple of unsettling encounters with them. We always try to remember the places we can pull over if a big truck suddenly comes rattling down the hill at us.

One thing which really gets me is people coming the opposite way who don't slow down to pass you. The road in the POD is a great example, one I've been down recently and had some less than pleasant experiences on. Three wheel tracks doesn't mean there's room for two cars to pass like on a normal road. Off the barer tracks there can be quite a lot of gravel piled up and it's never certain how much. You don't want to have to move over and slam on the brakes, especially when you have a steep drop at the side of the road. Happily I met several people on that road who had the same idea as me. If you see a car coming, start slowing down. When you've slowed down and can safely move into the gravel move over and then pass each other slowly, exchanging a cheery smile. The way not to do it is drive your Bighorn at 70 km/h straight at the other person, forcing them to slam on their brakes and slither to a stop and then pass them about 2 feet away without slowing down.

Blind corners are the trickiest. The surface of gravel roads can be corrugated, slippery and weirdly cambered. There may be a steep drop on the outside, or big ditches on both sides. All this means that it isn't always possible to come around a corner entirely on your side of the road, if the road is even wide enough for there to be "sides". I went around a steep, blind, corrugated, weirdly cambered drop-into-a-valley-on-the-outside corner the other day. I was going a touch fast and the corrugations also caused the car to bounce toward the apex a bit. I had to do a quick swerve as I exited the corner to avoid a BMW saloon which was charging into the corner really fast up the steep hill. When I came back that way I had trouble getting going nearly that fast up the hill. In this case I certainly admit I could have taken the corner better, but the other guy wasn't doing himself any favours by not anticipating trouble coming the other way round the corner. I always approach blind corners like someone might be coming round it on the wrong side of the road or, in the case of a stock truck, taking up the whole road. It's not unheard of to have to stop partway round a corner and reverse for a bit.

Slippery gravel on corners can catch out even big 4WDs. At the end of last season we were heading down a long gravel road to a hut on a river. A guy passed us in a Safari, going pretty fast. A bit further on down the road I saw him parked up at a funny angle. As we went past we saw he'd come off after a tight corner, and this in a 4WD with a winch, ropes and spades on the outside. He was going to the same place as us and at the end of what was passable in the Forester he kindly took us to the hut over some pretty rough terrain. It's funny that such a capable 4WD can be put off the road by loose gravel, but you only need to get that back-end twitch when you stray off the clear tracks going a touch fast to know that gravel can sometimes have more say over where the car is going than you do.

Something to look out for here in NZ on roads going to farms is gates. These roads are proper public roads with all the official signage and everything, but farmers still have gates to control stock. One road I go down has something like 14 gates. I don't go all the way down it too often! Sometimes the gates are signposted or have obvious surrounds like a bit of wooden fence, but they don't always and it can be tricky to tell if they're open or closed, especially at night. Judging by the state of some of the gates a few collisions have happened. On a related note, you never know when you're going to come round a corner to find sheep or cattle standing in the middle of the road. Sheep are especially bad for running off the road one way and then doubling back across it.

I've often heard people refer to a gravel road I use occasionally as a bad road. The road itself is actually pretty good, although you do need to be careful in places and at certain times of the year. I've certainly been on far worse. What makes the road bad is the people you meet on it.

I think if some people were a bit more courteous, a bit more conservative in their driving especially when passing or at corners and realised that their big ol' 4WD is not invincible, driving on gravel roads would be a lot more pleasant for everyone and a lot safer. It's just about being sensible and applying some common sense. Lots of people are great, but on a bad day a half to a third of encounters can be sketchy. It's kind of amazing there aren't more accidents. I'm not a perfect driver by any means, so even if you consider yourself pretty good keep in mind I may be coming around that corner the other way!

I've started this thread on the Board if you have any advice about driving on gravel roads to impart, or perhaps want to take issue with what I've said! It'd be interesting to hear about your experiences too.

Jo

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