Nearly in a serious car accident - hand hold please

[Usedandhurt]

Im literally shaking. Just had a driver nearly kill me and my dc on the motorway. He/she must have not checked before they pulled onto the motorway from a slip road, I literally had to slam on the breaks to avoid crashing into them and thankfully the driver behind me and the one behind them etc etc were able to stop also. My dc would have been very badly hurt - it was a huge bus and I can only imagine the driver got distracted.

Im a nervous driver at the best of times and Im literally sick with nerves.

Please link me to the legislation or state the number of the Highway Code rule that states this "etiquette".

I can do 600 miles plus a week on motorway when you see anything on the slip rd they only have a short distance to merge or have nowhere to go
so move over ( which you say isn’t an option ) or adjust your speed to let them in
where the hell did you think the bus was going to go

It's such a horrible feeling when inconsiderate drivers speed towards you on a slip road. Their intention is often to make you quickly move lane which can be extremely dangerous. When this happens to me I hold my ground and neither move over or speed up. People who behave like this on the road hate it when they see you are not perturbed and they are the ones who end up banging on their breaks. It's easier said than @done especially with children in the car. You were right to report this. Hope your ok now OP.

The bus should have given way, like Rule 259 of Highway Code says.

You doing 600 miles per week on the motorway just means that you spend 600 miles per week driving badly. It's not an indicator of authority on the subject of driving law.

So a near miss then.

I sympathise with the OP. You don't join the motorway unless there is a gap. I was driving up the A1 a few weeks ago. It goes from 3 lanes to 2 when the third lane becomes exit only. The lorry in lane 1 moved into lane 2. Lorry in lane 2 has plenty of space but decides to move into the outside lane but I'm there! He literally manoeuvered the corner of his flat bed over my bonnet. He can't have seen me and didn't indicate. Closest I've ever come to an injury inducing accident. I had nowhere to go, hit the brakes and turned the air blue.

The OP probably assumed the bus driver was driving properly, i.e matching his speed ready to pull into a safe gap he had identified in the traffic. It was the barging in regardless that took her by surprise.

You are damned if you do and damned if you don't @Usedandhurt . I safely move out into the second lane prior to a busy slip road and leave a safe distance between me and the car in front in the second lane, this allows people who might need to suddenly move over the space to do so. Doing this for a short distance, makes me a middle lane hogger as my car doesn't do much over the speed limit and infuriates white van men and German car drivers in equal measure, their displeasure is usually shown by driving right up behind me, not a safe distance from my vehicle or faffing about with lights and or driving with one hand, whilst the other is waving Disgusted with my law abiding behavior they then usually swerve erratically into the third lane,( instead of spending 30 seconds doing the speed limit, until I pull back over into the first lane) thus pissing off the Range rover hurtling down it doing a ton !

Which is exactly why op should have driven defensively and been aware that the bus driver was likely to be a bullying twat

I sympathize with you OP. It's really scary having a near miss especially with children in the car.

No, a vehicle joining from the slip road will move into the gap, then the other traffic adjust their distances as they go on.

The amount of rubbish in general on this thread is deeply worrying, and tbh I'm amazed I managed my 180 mile journey today unharmed.

Roads Policing is an entirely different department from the team department who deal with Rape and Burglaries. Don't be an idiot.

I don't own a German car but have hired them a number of times - Porsche, Audi, BMW and Mercedes. I also drove a topless Bentley on the South of France and hired a British Lotus Elise which was great for taking my mum to the shops ahead of my big birthday weekend. I am a competent and considerate driver and my driving standards were the same whether I was driving a Mini, a Nissan or a Peugeot. People need to overcome their inadequacies. I also drove an AC Cobra.

i had one that gave me PTSD, and still makes me cry thinking about it 10 years later... mine was being missed by inches by someone driving towards me down the wrong side of a motorway at 70mph in the dark.. when i was stuck in the fast lane due to roadworks.
I ended up having to throw my car into the closed lane as i realised at the last moment the headlights approaching me were IN MY LANE.

I found out later it was a 70yo lady who had got confused, luckily she didn't kill anyone before she finally got pulled over 4 miles after she almost killed me... the near miss with me scared her into slowing right down.

BE glad you've never had a near miss that's left you that traumatised. I don't do a lot of night driving these days, and yes, i have had therapy to help process it.

People are not that great at driving which is why buses and walking and 20mph limits are the way forward.

Much of the Highway Code is based on laws - including the Road Traffic Act 1988.

I drive on M25 mosts days this shit happens all the time, had a car U turn on the M3 slip road last week, drive over the chevrons and pull out in front of me over the grass verge - absolutely mental -but that's life. you do not sound very confident on motorways to be honest.

when you approach a junction move to the middle to let vehicles in

Idiotic statement, the next lane is not necessarily clear, or are you suggesting that you move over and cross your fingers? Some comments like this explain why so many can't drive on motorways.

Yeah it more important to prove a point because your in the right and making them run off the road or force there way in
than take action to let them on the motorway

I don’t claim to be an authority but see this on a regular basis
each to there own but some people put being right above being safe

also this is why hazard perception is part of your the test to avoid situations like this

The actual Highway Code for all those who clearly do not know:

Rule 271
You MUST NOT stop on any carriageway, emergency area, hard shoulder, slip road, central reservation or verge except in an emergency, or when told to do so by the police, traffic officers, an emergency sign or by red flashing light signals.
Do not stop on any part of a motorway to make or receive mobile telephone calls, except in an emergency.

The lack of empathy on here is staggering. I bet loads of the unsympathetic posters on here also share or like ‘mental health awareness’ Facebook posts.

PTSD can be caused by near miss road incidents. The OP just asked for a bit of sympathy after coming home and feeling ill shaky, crying, not the ins and outs of the Highway Code and its legalities or who everyone thinks is wrong or right.

It’s irrelevant whether someone else would not have been shaky and crying an hour later. PTSD is a mental health condition individual to a specific person and incident. Neither person would be right or wrong to feel either way (but it is wrong to make someone feel they are wrong to feel however they feel).

From PTSD UK:

Even a ‘near miss’ can leave someone involved or nearby with a traumatic imprint. You may have experienced a surge of emotion and a sense of danger and helplessness

https://www.ptsduk.org/what-is-ptsd/causes-of-ptsd/road-traffic-incident/

Clearly you are able to stop on a slip road if there is a queue of traffic to join the motorway. This refers to the fact that you must not stop when the road is clear ie to make a phone call / look at a map etc.

What's interesting is the clash between what is actually best practice as laid out in the highway code, and what I was taught in motorway driving lessons in Germany - drivers in the first lane should leave a gap between them and the car in front, but should maintain consistent speed next to slip roads in order to be predictable for cars joining. No moving over, no slowing down in anticipation (yes to slowing slightly to increase a gap when someone is indicating or otherwise seems likely to turn in).

And then you have common UK driving etiquette, which is that drivers already on the road should be anticipating sliproad traffic and make space for those joining. In fact, being out of the first lane entirely is considered a good idea so as not to be "in the way". It's so widespread as a belief and practice that this is what I believe it to be. Driving etiquette rules are not usually listed in any highway code but can be observed if you either watch the way people drive or discuss a common "who's in the right" driving scenario like this.

Apparently, there's a driving etiquette rule in Poland where if you want to overtake on a two lane road you just drive confidently down the middle of the road and people going either direction just move out of the way. Not one I'd feel confident testing! But another example of something that is unofficial. Sometimes the unofficial rules do make it into the highway code. For example in Germany it's customary to warn following traffic of an upcoming traffic jam by briefly putting on hazard lights. This is actually in their highway code but it's just given as a "this is useful to do" not "you must do this". And you hear about the Dutch reach which Dutch learner drivers are taught, to improve visibility of cyclists.

Some people have mentioned defensive driving which is a different thing again. Defensive driving isn't about what is the correct or expected thing to do, it's about being aware that other people might well drive in unexpected ways, being ready to take defensive action in order to avoid a collision, and knowing how to do that safely.

(Sorry OP I imagine the whole argument isn't particularly helpful! Hope that by now you are feeling a bit better.)