If you are someone who drives down a slip road towards a busy dual carriageway with no intention of stopping ….

[EvangelicalAboutButteredToast]

Where do you think the cars are going to go if they is no space to go into the outside lane?

There is a really bad junction I’m currently dealing with every day. He cars come down the slip road in convoy. No ability for me to slot inbetween and they show absolutely no sign of slowing down to wait to join the trunk road. If I have a car on my right, where do these people think I’m going to avoid a collision?

"...but I think the problem you are describing may more affect nervous drivers who tend to sit below the speed limit and sit in lane one"

I agree with much of what you say, but I'm not so sure about this part.

I live in an area where there are multiple junctions within a short space of each other. These can easily be within 300m of each other (ie 300m between the entry slip road and the following exit slip road).

At peak times there will be a lot of traffic in lane 1 wanting to get off at the following exit 300m down the road. There is also a lot of traffic in lane 2, as you say, overtaking the slower moving traffic.

No one in lane 1 is going to be moving over to lane 2 as they want to get off at the next junction 300m up the road and, in any event, lane 2 is also congested.

This often leads to cars on the slip road having to stop.

there was a bunfight about this not so long ago on here, no idea why as the highway code makes it perfectly clear the full onus is for the person accessing the road to join safely if they can, and there is no responsibility for the people already on the road to adjust their speed/let them on, let alone move into the other lane!

yes, of course, if you can do what you can to make it easier for someone to join, it's nice to do so but you don't have to.

at the end of the day it would be incredibly rare for a car to just drive into the side of you, if you hold your position (assuming you are slightly in front of them) they will filter behind you,

And yet, that exact thing happened to me just a couple of weeks ago.
A man in his van deciding that I, somehow, was supposed to get out of the way for him. It was VERY close.

the irony of so confidently telling someone else they are wrong, given you presumably haven't glanced at any of the several links to the highway code on here which makes clear you are wrong.

However dangerous it is to stop on a slip road, surely it must be obvious to someone with even half a brain that it is vastly more dangerous to stop (or even be forced to reduce speed drastically) on the motorway, which will almost always be going much faster.

If it's so incredibly dangerous to stop on a slip road, what do you do when traffic on the main road is tailing bumper to bumper or at a complete stand-still? Just keep driving into them until you crash because they HAVE to make room for you even though there is nowhere to go? Nope, you queue until someone lets you on. It's exactly the same when both cars are moving at speed - you join WHEN there is a safe space, nobody has any obligation to make one for you (although most people usually will try if it is possible).

I have a theory that people who think like you are also the ones who use their indicators to mean "I want to change lanes so MAKE SPACE FOR ME, I'M COMING WHETHER YOU WANT ME TO OR NOT" rather than waiting for a safe space to occur and then indicating to show you intend to move into it.

Yeah the one I was thinking of you also approach coming up a hill. The poorer visibility is noticeable.

This should be talked about more, because not leaving enough space and braking causes an awful lot of slow or standstill traffic that could be avoided. They’re called phantom jams and the Dartford Tunnel is a prime example

Most people are trying to give sensible advice, which they're interpreting as common sense.

However, the highway code states the 'driver who's already on the motorway has right of way' they're not obliged to slow down, make you coffee and give you a pat on the back like everyone else keeps suggesting.

The driver joining the highway is the one who's supposed to slow down, adjust speed, and change lanes when it's safe to do so.

And all the above is exactly why I have put away my driving license and sold my car.

However, the highway code states the 'driver who's already on the motorway has right of way' they're not obliged to slow down, make you coffee and give you a pat on the back like everyone else keeps suggesting.

Quite right.
However - they are supposed to be maintaining an adequate distance from the vehicle in front of them in their lane. If everyone was all doing this, then there would be room for merging from the slip road.

If the person merging was doing the correct speed - this is something that many drivers are incapable of doing. They hammer down the slip road and then expect the drivers on the trunk road to brake to accommodate their merge at a faster speed than the drivers who have priority.

I think the issue which some haven’t quite realised, is that the cars approaching from the slip road are not working at merging. They are behaving as though the motorway cars will work around them, not aiming for spaces, but continuing at a speed that suits them and assuming the motorway cars will get out of their way.
This isn’t about bloodyminded notorway drivers making life hard for the slip road guys.

When the motorway traffic is heavy and your eyes are on the lorry in front, the bloke who was up your tail, and is now overtaking at speed without much room for manoeuvre, all at 65 miles an hour, you don’t necessarily have headspace to watch the slip road too.

If cars joining from a slip road can't merge between you and the car in front and your answer is speed up, you're a dangerous driver. You aren't leaving a big enough gap between you and the car in front of you in the first place. You hold your speed so cars on the slip road can speed up to filter in, even slow down a mile or two but never speed up.

If there were no cars in front of you then there was clearly ample room for you to let them in? They probably saw the space and were accelerating to meet the gap at the correct time and you cocked it up by also accelerating into the space they were aiming for

Read the thread. I was travelling on an average speed road where you either adhere to the speed limit or get fined. The assumption that I was in the wrong just makes me laugh. I was going at the correct speed and when this line of cars looked like they were going to join the road on top
of me I checked to see if I could pull right, nope, so I either ‘held my nerve’ and waited to see if I was hit or accelerated and avoided them. What they failed to do was leave appropriate gaps between their cars to slot in around me and that, I guess, was the point of the thread.

Read the thread. Average speed road. I was going the correct speed or below. Couldn’t pull right so sped up to avoid the four cars that were about to plough into me. My point was why aren’t the slip road cars doing anything to make sure they merge safely into the dual carriageway and the answer was that they were being driven my Mumsnetters who are convinced they have right of way. So my question was answered.

Thank you.

Oh your last paragraph just made me chuckle. That needs an extra thread of its own. Do you indicate into a space or use your indicator to force a space? I have absolute disdain for the latter.

When is a slip road a slip road?
You can think of those big long slip roads that you get on motorways where you obviously speed up to match and merge.

But there are plenty of roads that merge with an A road that maybe a slip road or may simply be a junction.

On the A64 near me, I can think of at least 2 "slip roads" where you would have to wait as you get heavy lorries zooming down and there is no way you can pull put to match the speed, no way the lorry can slow down in time and no way they can pull out. So you would wait if there was no way to enter safely.

But it's probably not an obvious slip road. And a car from behind would have to wait as well.

Seems like the main issue is cars driving far too close to those in front (as pp have said). In this case, the slip road people.

If they didn't did that and let a sensible gap, none of this would be an issue.

You sound like a terrible driver. How do you think everyone else that uses that road manages? To speed up and get ahead of people trying to join is ridiculous, if there was space for you to do that, there was space to let someone merge.

Exactly. The number of posters on this thread who believe the drivers on the trunk road have to give way to them is scary - but it certainly explains a lot of the crap driving I see on the roads.

And YY to indicators meaning "I want to change lanes so MAKE SPACE FOR ME, I'M COMING WHETHER YOU WANT ME TO OR NOT". I see it all the time on motorways and dual carriageways, it's a wonder there aren't more accidents actually. Fortunately there are just enough of us who know how to drive and can therefore prevent pile-ups.

Read the thread fgs.

If your joining from a slip road it's your responsibility to look ahead, speed up, match your speed to the traffic and merge into a gap appropriately. I've never seen a situation where there wasn't a gap and it was necessary to stop on the end of the sliproad like some people do - that's incredibly dangerous.

I’ve read the whole thing and that’s my opinion

You doubled down on…
You sound like a terrible driver. How do you think everyone else that uses that road manages? To speed up and get ahead of people trying to join is ridiculous, if there was space for you to do that, there was space to let someone merge.

I sound like a terrible driver because I accelerated to make space behind me instead of into the side of me? Alrighty then 🥴