Stressful incident on motorway, scared

I’ve already addressed this in another comment. Read the thread.

you would have been better slowing down slighty to allow him to pass, but it does sound like he was going to let you out, even though he did not make it obvious. Never stop on a slip road x

It’s up to the joining traffic to adjust speed, not those on the motorway. As soon as you’re on the slip road you should be eagle eyed on the left lane to assess whether to speed up or slow down to merge

That sounds a bit like joining the M4 eastbound coming out of Bristol 😱 Short slip road on a curve. You needed your wits about you. Love your comments about indicators and eye contact!

Slip roads are difficult. In Australia they kind of merge the lanes on the freeways so people zip and I think that's easier to do. Also many of our slip roads are quite short compared with overseas ones.

If people are being nice (and want to avoid accidents) they will either speed up, slow down, or move over a lane to let you on. Lets face it they are looking forward and have a better view than you do in your mirror. But ultimately the responsibility is yours and you have to judge it.

People who beep for no reason other than impatience are a PITA too. You are only meant to beep to avoid a dangerous situation like someone reversing out of a space into you.

The OP did nothing wrong. Those who are saying, it's your responsibility to merge, that's all well and good, but slip lanes are only so long. if there's a constant stream of traffic in the nearside lane, and no-one pulls over or slows down, there may quite simply not be a gap. In the worst-case, you end up on the chevrons and stationary.When I'm on a motorway and approaching a slip-road, I always pull over into the middle lane if I safely can, that's just courteous driving.

Jesus Christ. And this one.
don’t do this!

If you really can't manage your speed to merge you really have to stop and hope everyone behind you understands your problem but that is really bad if the motorway is just running normally not crawling. I might run down the hard shoulder a bit to merge, might not be legal. No one has to move over to let you in and they might not be able to you just have to figure it out for yourself.

Don't do this

You have go anticipate that other people will do stupid things. Leave enough space and slow down sooner if you realise you're getting too close. And too close means can still fit a good two or three cars in there btw

Then you have to stop at the end of the slip road if you can't merge. Is this not in your theory test?

In practice I've never had to stop at the end of the slip road, but you should know the basics of merging. You need to match your speed to the road, you need to find space and not expect the car on the motorway to adjust their speed.

Many cars will be courteous and move over or create space, and again this is what I would do. But it is essentially a courtesy and you cant rely on it.

You need some lessons in motorway driving.

Much better to fix this now and gain the skills and experience you need with someone in the car who can teach you and help you do so safely.

Only an arrogant, selfish idiot drives knowing that his or her skills aren't what they should be. You'll be doing the mature, responsible thing if you book some extra tuition and afterwards driving will be less stressful.

Yeah I must admit I winced reading that. Wtf? What happened to stopping at the end of the slip road and waiting until a gap appears? Instead listing the options as basically ramming your car into someone else's or barrelling down the hard shoulder at 70 mph.

Why drive all the way to the end of the slip road? I join at the earliest possibility or I gauge the traffic as I am joining and use the slip road to either speed up or slow down to allow me to merge in. Much easier if there is slow traffic to slow down further up the slip road than wait until you're at the end.

I have ended up on the hard shoulder before now. Then, I just carried on gently on the hard shoulder for a bit to clear all the junction, then booted it up to 50+ and indicated to join the carriageway.

Bear in mind, OP, that you can go up to 60+ in third gear so don't be afraid to use all the available acceleration of the car in this situation.

If auto, just stamp fully on the pedal (kick down) and the full power of the car will be available.

No need to get out of the car and go up the bank..

THIS is the kind of post that’s scary…

I have run out of road twice before when merging onto the M25 (from Leatherhead) but nowhere else.

It does happen sometimes. No fucker will let you out and it’s continuous traffic.

Try not to dwell on it. 💐

No it’s good advice but it’s not compulsory so you should expect other drivers to not do that for you. If they are nice and do so, happy days

You stop. It’s not ideal but fundamentally you’re joining and if you can’t join safely you stop. Be prepared for a driver in front of you on the slip road to slow or stop too.

i think the posts of “this is scary” are less aimed at you (you’re unsure and asking questions which is good) but at the many other posted who are confidently wrong

That is usually true but there is one particular point coming out of the city where I used to work where , during evening rush hour, people on the motorway would often be packed tight doing at least 50, sometimes 60 or 70. If they were doing 20 it would have been fairly easily doable, 30-40 nervewracking , 50 plus was fucking terrifying. You'd have the indicator on (shouldn't be necessary really- if you're coming up the slip you only have one legal intention!) speed matching, desperately trying to make eye contact with someone to let you on, whilst also trying to keep one eye on the rear view to see how close the next car coming up the slip was and your third eye on the hatch/hard shoulder as the escape route. I hated it, I never actually had to resort to the hard shoulder or an emergency stop but came close a few times which is heart poundingly horrible. OP, you have my sympathies.

I think bits of motorway like that should have speed limits at certain times of day. If some sort of AI auto-sensor could detect lots of cars going too fast, too tight, then it could trigger temporary speed limit boards to light up, slow the motorway down and give everyone more of a chances to create gaps for merging cars.

Nothing will happen. This time next week (probably sooner) this will be a distant memory. This kind of thing is so common, it’s just par for the course if you drive on busy roads. The first time I went out alone after passing my test, I nearly clipped a cyclist. Ended up taking an Advanced Drivers exam years later, and still sometimes get it wrong, as do we all.

It sounds like you did the right thing by stopping / slowing down. However, it’s not up to people on the motorway to move or slow down as a lot of people in the comments have stated, the onus is on the person joining the motorway, to change their speed and fit in where they can. So keep checking your mirror, see if you can judge their speed and either slow down or speed up to get in front or behind them. It does get easier with experience, don’t let it put you off driving. There is also the possibility that the guy who beeped was an absolute dick who adjusted his speed to deliberately not let you join, I’ve had that before. The most important thing is to be safe and keep others safe on the road, which is what you did ❤️

The highway code includes 'SHOULD' and 'MUST' in it's rules, 'should' means if you don't do it you are a bit of a dick, 'must' means you are breaking the law and heading in to dangerous driving territory, which potentially carrys a custodial sentence if you kill someone whilst doing or not doing something written as 'must' or 'must not'.

Eg. You 'must' not straddle or cross a double white line where the nearest line to you is solid.... = dangerous driving.