Driving - what would you have done?

asquithea

I had a bad time trying to merge onto the M4 from the A419

Twas dark, raining, unfamiliar, and (significantly) uphill. Coming down the slip-road (roughly at the pic) I got overhauled and run off the road by a coach in the nearside line.

Shoulder-checked to see it going a little faster - about where the grass starts - but my little car wouldn't get up quite enough speed to match. I expected (hoped?) the coach would bleed off a little speed or switch lanes, but realized too late he wasn't going to do anything of the kind. Ran out of sliproad and had to dive for the hard shoulder while the coach eaaassed past.

Highway code is pretty clear cut - he had right of way - but bearing in mind that he must have had his foot down to keep speed up the hill, and he could see me quite easily, I felt a little aggrieved (there may have been some swearing).

Bearing in mind the dark and crap visibility, what would you have done?
- Pretty much what I did, running off onto the hard shoulder?
- Immediate hard braking to come to a stop by the end of the slip?
- Something else?

(Curious, 'cause I've never got trapped like that before)

Kieran_Burns

That line is a give way. The highway code is very clear, you should be prepared to stop.

asquithea

No sh*t, I know what the HWC says.
Here's the link: https://www.gov.uk/motorways-253-to-273 ... torway-259

Question is, what would you have actually done? 55 - dead stop in that distance, with a slippery dark road behind you and a hill to accelerate up? Didn't seem like an attractive option at the time.

kelsen

Probably same as you, but I would hope that I could plan sufficiently far ahead not to get into that situation and would have just merged behind the coach.

Just chalk it up as a lesson learnt.

First.Aspect

The sliproad is downhill and you have a good view of the carriageway. From the bus's perspective, you probably dropped out of the sky into his blind spot and he might not have known you were there. Its up to you to figure that out to be honest.

If he did see you, it might not have been for long (take a look at the streetview from the carriageway - its in the outside lane and taken from a stalk on top of a van, but even so the view of the sliproad is not good) and he was probably wondering why you didn't lift off slightly and drop in behind him.

Given the choice you left yourself with, I'd say you did the right thing, but that's in a "I cycled down the inside of a bus, should I ditch the bike, dive and roll, or try a bunny hop over the railings?" kind of a way. Ditch the bike for sure. But don't cycle down the inside of a bus in the first place.

First.Aspect

Kieran_Burns wrote:

That line is a give way. The highway code is very clear, you should be prepared to stop.

Yes but in the real world, kids, don't drop your anchors on a sliproad*. The unstoppable aggregates vehicle behind you may not notice in time.


*(unless its the M25, M6, M1, M40, M42, M8 or M60, in which case the carriagway will be full of stationary traffic, so you will have to slop in order to match your speed).

asquithea

If he did see you, it might not have been for long

Aye, that's true - I guess he would have had to look across the cab to see me coming down the slip, and he probably figured I'd be faster.

I like your analogy with cycling down the side of a bus. Once you've committed, you've either got to get to the front, or realise in time that you're not going to make it and stop.

First.Aspect

asquithea wrote:

If he did see you, it might not have been for long

Aye, that's true - I guess he would have had to look across the cab to see me coming down the slip, and he probably figured I'd be faster.

I like your analogy with cycling down the side of a bus. Once you've committed, you've either got to get to the front, or realise in time that you're not going to make it and stop.

I've been driving for 20+ years and I've not had many close calls recently, but I did have a few when I was in my teens/20's. So we've all fecked up a bit when driving, I'm sure.

CiB

I am led to believe that in the circumstances as described by our friend Mr Asquithea, the correct response is to dee-lock the offending gentleman who was driving the bus, regardless of the ins and outs of the case.

jds_1981

One of the reasons I'm thinking of getting a more powerful car. Gives you another option than braking.

Initialised

asquithea wrote:

I had a bad time trying to merge onto the M4 from the A419

Twas dark, raining, unfamiliar, and (significantly) uphill. Coming down the slip-road (roughly at the pic) I got overhauled and run off the road by a coach in the nearside line.

Shoulder-checked to see it going a little faster - about where the grass starts - but my little car wouldn't get up quite enough speed to match. I expected (hoped?) the coach would bleed off a little speed or switch lanes, but realized too late he wasn't going to do anything of the kind. Ran out of sliproad and had to dive for the hard shoulder while the coach eaaassed past.

Highway code is pretty clear cut - he had priority (being allowed to use a road or path is 'right of way'[/pedantry])- but bearing in mind that he must have had his foot down to keep speed up the hill, and he could see me quite easily, I felt a little aggrieved (there may have been some swearing).

Bearing in mind the dark and crap visibility, what would you have done?
- Pretty much what I did, running off onto the hard shoulder?
- Immediate hard braking to come to a stop by the end of the slip?
- Something else?

(Curious, 'cause I've never got trapped like that before)

*fixed*

Your responsibility to match speed and find a gap, in this case you should have eased off to slip in behind the coach.

I'd have dropped a gear and floored it, probably poor manners but having a turbo'd car give one the option.

waddlie

OP, you have PM.

greg66_tri_v2.0

asquithea wrote:

No sh*t, I know what the HWC says.
Here's the link: https://www.gov.uk/motorways-253-to-273 ... torway-259

Question is, what would you have actually done? 55 - dead stop in that distance, with a slippery dark road behind you and a hill to accelerate up? Didn't seem like an attractive option at the time.

At the eternal risk of sounding like an utter tosser, I've pretty much always had fast cars. I would have booted it and put a 1/4 mile between me and the coach.

In a slow car though, honestly, not sure. Probably pushed my luck then braked hard when I realised it wasn't going to work, drop a gear and tuck right in behind the coach.

roger_merriman

that sort of accident or near accident is rather common. Could the Coach move out? what was in the middle lane? and so on.

realistically you need to be able to back out of it, what would I have done? rather depends on what I was driving and so on would determine my reactions. While fast cars/bikes are fun the middle pedal will change your speed far quicker, and not add further speed to a possibly worsening situation, thats not to say that with my wee rust bucket I may well have just Booted it, since it picks up well, the works van is slow and handles like a pig so i'd just lift off and let the coach by.

suzyb

Haven't read full thread as on phone so may not have understood properly. However I thought vehicles on the motorway were supposed to move over or slow down to let others join.

peat

I think you did the right thing tbh.

The bus wasn't at liberty to let you in. Maybe they were being an arse, maybe they couldn't move out into lane 2...who knows.

But, i am happy to use the hard shoulder for a couple of hundred metres if needs be to bleed off speed and tuck in. NEVER EVER stop at the top of a slip road. Once you are there, you have to be commited. If you stop, the person behind who probably has thier head craned round looking for thier gap will plough into you and it won't end well for either of you. Just don't panic and use the space available - They're only painted lines afterall.

boblo

suzyb wrote:

Haven't read full thread as on phone so may not have understood properly. However I thought vehicles on the motorway were supposed to move over or slow down to let others join.

Unless you're trolling I hope you don't drive... Unfortunatley. a lot of people seem to think they now have right of way when joining via slips, joining roundabouts or using junctions. I'm afraid, they are just ignorant (of the law/highway code at least if not generally).

I this case? The OP should have bled speed off and slipped in behind the coach.

daviesee

boblo wrote:

suzyb wrote:

Haven't read full thread as on phone so may not have understood properly. However I thought vehicles on the motorway were supposed to move over or slow down to let others join.

Unless you're trolling I hope you don't drive... Unfortunatley. a lot of people seem to think they now have right of way when joining via slips, joining roundabouts or using junctions. I'm afraid, they are just ignorant (of the law/highway code at least if not generally).

I this case? The OP should have bled speed off and slipped in behind the coach.

+1
People may move over out of courtesy but they are under no obligation to do so.

davis

Yup. You can't expect the coach to move out, and if you're not in a fast enough car to safely (i.e. easily) get past, you should be prepared to stop.

[Edit]: I've just re-read that following CiB's post. I don't think I meant "stop" as the only time I've stopped on the slip-road is when traffic on the road I'm joining is also stopped; I meant "slow down to let the bus go past". Leaving my post as-is so it doesn't affect others' posts.

CiB

Driving onto the hard shoulder was the only realistic exit. Buses aren't able to change direction v quickly and it's quite feasible that there may have been a car hidden from your view on his offside preventing him moving over. It was an unfortunate coincidence of timing; 2 or 3 seconds either way and it wouldn't have been an issue. I'd like to think I'd have clocked the bus in plenty of time to either get ahead (in my car) or drop the speed off a bit if in OH's much slower beast.

Sb - whatever the ins & outs of who should do what, traffic flows best when there's a consensus between drivers so I expect we might rely on others getting out of the way in this situation. Pers exp is that it's not safe to assume that a gap will magically appear so start looking at how to join the main c/way as soon as poss from the top of the sliproad. They're long enough to weigh up the options and add or lose speed acc to the situation.

Re the stopping, a good mate of mine v nearly kacked himself when his g/f on her first foray onto a motorway drove up to the g/w at the end of the slip road and stopped to check before continuing. No-one had told her otherwise.

peat

CiB wrote:

Re the stopping, a good mate of mine v nearly kacked himself when his g/f on her first foray onto a motorway drove up to the g/w at the end of the slip road and stopped to check before continuing. No-one had told her otherwise.

She would/should have done dual carriageways as part of her tuition/test so i find that inexcusable.

There was a near here a year or so ago where a lady (with child in the back) ended up stopping at the top of a slip-road because she 'couldn't' get onto the carriageway. She was wiped out by another car joining the carriageway. No survivors.

meanredspider

I admit to getting upset when a slower-moving vehicle pulls out into my lane, baulking me, to let another vehicle join that could easily have adjusted its speed to merge safely. Maybe people (as Suzyb does) believe that you're at an obligation to move out but it does seem that they're happy to baulk someone already on the road in favour of:

a. letting the car joining give way by adjusting their speed
b. adjust their own speed to let the guy merge.

I should add that I'm always the first person to accommodate someone moving out if I see the situation has become a pinch.

It's all about awareness & consideration for other road users - unfortunately, as cyclists, we know that's in pretty short supply.

tailwindhome

@OP

Do you think you could have anticipated the situation any better?

CubeMark

The slip road looks very long so you should have had enough time to get up to a decent speed before getting to the end of it. It also runs along side the motorway and you said the bus was going faster than you, so you should have had plenty of opportunity to see it. Waiting until the end of a slip road to decide whether to speed up or slow down doesn't seem like great planning to me.

Speed up to 70 on the slip road and identify several potential gaps in the motorway traffic while you approach the end. It's important to identify a number of gaps, don't get fixed on one incase someone in lane 2 of the motorway moves to lane 1, or the gap closes. So now your'e travelling at motorway speeds, you know where you're going and have a backup plan too, the merging bit should be easy.

asquithea

I think, having had that experience on that junction, I need to recognize that I'm always going to get caught by traffic already on the motorway*, even if I floor it from the top of the slip road.

With that in mind, I think I'd merge slower, so I've got more time to slide in behind traffic. Would mean I'm more likely to be caught by traffic from behind, but that shouldn't matter as long as I'm not cutting in.

Or I could treat this as an excuse to go N+1, and buy a sports car :-)


*Edit: Re 70 mph merging; the issue is that my car's a little Citroen C2 1.1. I can't match motorway speed at that junction unless I floored it at the top of the slip, which leaves me screwed if there's no gap.

peat

asquithea wrote:

With that in mind, I think I'd merge slower, so I've got more time to slide in behind traffic.

The slower you go in relation to the traffic you are merging into, the faster the gaps will disappear and the speed delta is more likely to cause accidents with people trying to avoid you as you accelerate.

Also, no-one will want to let you in if they have to stand on the anchors to do so. Just accelerate at a decent lick from the top of the slip and then adjust your speed to blend when you can see what's going on, you can slow down a C2 faster than you can accelerate it.

meanredspider

asquithea wrote:

which leaves me screwed if there's no gap.

The middle pedal comes in useful at this point

bails87

Or I could treat this as an excuse to go N+1, and buy a sports car


*Edit: Re 70 mph merging; the issue is that my car's a little Citroen C2 1.1. I can't match motorway speed at that junction unless I floored it at the top of the slip, which leaves me screwed if there's no gap.

I used to have a 1l or 1.1l Pug 107, ~55-60hp IIRC. Fun little car but woefully asthmatic in this kind of siutation.

I've now got a 1.8 Focus TDCi, with 115hp and the difference is like night and day. I can approach slip roads knowing that I can put my foot down and comfortably be doing 70mph by the end of it. Likewise if I get stuck behind a bimbler and am forced to join the Mway at 40mph with trucks bearing down on me. I know I can get up to a sensible speed, get past the bimbler and get out of danger. I normally 'briskly' get up to the same speed as the traffic in the slow lane, then pick a gap and either slow down or speed up to get into it.

It doesn't need to be a sports car, just something that's capable of pulling itself along at a reasonable pace.

That said, I do keep looking at the Focus STs....2.5 litre turbo, hmmm.

That said, you do need to anticipate and appreciate what's going on or you'll just end up in the same situation but at a higher speed.

Ben6899

Greg66 wrote:

At the eternal risk of sounding like an utter tosser, I've pretty much always had fast cars.

You had a Ford Probe, right?

peat

Ben6899 wrote:

Greg66 wrote:

At the eternal risk of sounding like an utter tosser, I've pretty much always had fast cars.

You had a Ford Probe, right?

Ha! I must have been 14 or so when my then 16yr old sister came in and told me, in giddy excitement "I got a lift home in a SPORTS CAR today!!". Oh course i enquired which one. "It was called a 'Ford Probe'" she beamed.

Even at the age of 14, i didn't have the heart to tell her. :roll:

SteppenHerring

Dying to leave Swindon? I know the feeling.

I know the feeling. Sometimes you have to rely on the vehicle already on the motorway not being driven by a c**t. This time you were unlucky. There is a noticeable up-slope there. I can understand the coach not wanting to lose speed but they could've moved out.