Stressful incident on motorway, scared

It's because you expected the driver already on the motorway to make way for you rather than you join safely.

Why was he beeping when you were slowing down, presumably prepared to stop at the end of the sliproad? Maybe he was expecting you to still merge but he should have slowed and flashed his lights or moved over if this was the case. There are real dicks on the motorway, eg I once overtook this guy who then started to speed up as I was overtaking. I finally managed to get in in front of him, and could see him in my rearview mirror (so wasn't too close, although he was gassing it and speeding up) and was met with a barrage of beeping as I pulled back in. Then, about 10 miles later on, he overtook me and leaned on the horn as he passed me, apparently in 'revenge' for the previous event. Bizarre.

I was just about to say this.

@Badbadbunny your summary is not what the article says 😬

Weve all been there when new to driving, perhaps misjudged a situation and learned from it. Usually people slow to let you on a slip road but not always so you need to be prepared for them not to. This sounds like a situation that wasn’t easy to predict given the braking in front, but I guess you should always be leaving enough room that someone breaking isn’t an issue. Someone beeping doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve done something terrible though, it often is just a reflection of how irritable and impatient the beeper is!

You did fine, OP, given the person in front had slowed down and the guy in the near side lane clearly wasn’t a good driver. Yes, the onus is on the person merging to do so safely (which you did your best with under the circumstances), but good drivers pay attention and slack off or speed up a bit (or change lanes if safe) as necessary to facilitate people joining. And by and large if they’ve left a safe distance between themselves and the car in front, there should be room for one car to merge into, after which they should slack off to reopen the appropriate gap.

If you can't go faster, you should drop your speed slightly and merge in behind him.

The responsibility to merge is that of the car doing the merging, not the responsibility of those already on the motorway.

Having said that, we all make mistakes, especially when new to driving! Use it as a learning opportunity, but definitely don't dwell on it 🙂

It is not up to the driver in the main carriageway to do anything, the merging car is responsible for gauging speed and safety and adjusting so they merge safely into the main flow of traffic. It’s dangerous to think that cars have to speed up or slow down to accommodate merging cars, they don’t.

Agree with this, if it’s not clear there is an obvious space you have to take action not wait for someone else to get out of the way. If you indicate by your road placement and speed that you are merging the car behind has to slow to make way

Reporting you for being cautious? If there wasn’t enough space , there wasn’t enough space, I thought everyone should always be able to stop in time anyway. I’ve had my licence for decades but I hate motorways and avoid them like the plague. I’d rather go the long way

Merging can be so stressful. You just have to chalk it up to experience and carry on. Nobody will report you.

Then you have to come to a stop. But I would argue that that's a lot more dangerous than someone slowing down somewhat in good time before the sliproad (eg dropping from 70 to 60) to allow traffic to merge safely into a clear gap.

You have to do exactly what you did and slow down. Any halfway decent driver in the nearside lane should be able to see what’s happening and adjust appropriately even if they don’t ‘have’ to.

Exactly, most people will move or allow others to merge but it seems the selfish drivers of mumsnet are out in full force today! OP please ignore them. You will get more confident.

Although realistically if the traffic is solid on the motorway such that there is absolutely no gap to safely merge into then it is likely that the motorway traffic is moving more slowly anyway as traffic has built up. I've queued on slip roads on many occasions

What are you supposed to do if you are coming up the slip road, speed matched to the motorway cars but they are all rigidly exercising their right not to adjust their speed or move over (the latter slightly understandable if they're coming off at the next exit but everyone is being an arsehole and they're afraid they won't get let back into the left lane in time) but sadly not observing their obligation to leave a safe stopping distance from the car in front, or indeed a gap big enough to wedge a smartcar in edgeways. That's OK if everyone is crawling but if they're clipping along at 50-70 and you're running out of road, it's quite unnerving. Your choices are
-force your way on, literally pick a non existent gap, get level with another car, sound your horn and tighten in till your wing mirror is hitting theirs and hope they slow down. Ridiculously dangerous, recipe for a pileup or at least serious road rage mess, I've never done it

• go onto the hatched bit still speed matched, but sometimes they're quite short and if nobody cops the fuck on and lets you in, you will be on the hard shoulder doing 50-70 and have to admit defeat, stop, get out of the car and up the bank to await rescue or the rush hour traffic to die down
• make a judgement call when you are seriously running out of road, put your hazards on and try to get stopped (without the car behind you on the slip rear ending you and shunting you into the motorway to get T boned), coming to rest on the hatched bit (v hazardous) or the slip road- with the same result as option 2 except now you are blocking the slip road in rush hour, and therefore probably a feeder roundabout.

I've done this myself...if you can't merge you have to stop surely

Don’t worry about the PP’s ‘OMG, SO DANGEROUS!’, comments- I think they are responding to some of the advice you’ve had rather than to you.

So you vary your speed in your lane so you are aiming for a gap. If you look like you’re trying, the cars are more likely to accommodate.

Unfortunately sometimes you and the other driver misread each others- I had it recently, he slowed to let me in just as I slowed to drop behind him. We both got flustered and irritated. It happens.

It takes everyone paying attention and trying to accommodate, basically. Sometimes there’s an arsehole, but generally no one wants to die in a mangled mess so assume good intent on the part of other people.

It's absolutely sensible to do this if you can safely. The concern is that some of these posts indicate that posters believe that this is a requirement.

No I would say that is correct advice actually and responsive driving. According to the Highway Code the responsibility lies with the person merging (because they can't place it on the people already on the road) but careful driving means avoiding contributing to dangerous situations or hazards. If you see a slip road coming up and it is safe to do so, adjust your speed slightly to allow seamless merging. That is to say, if you can see that someone is trying to merge, don't make life difficult for them unnecessarily.

Oh, another thing- you need to leave space between you and the car in front to give you more options. Don’t join a line of clustered cars as there won’t be room for all of you to get in one gap. Space out!

The gaps in the traffic should be braking distance apart, which is plenty big enough to get into- then everyone just has to adjust until braking distance is reached again.