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?

This is definitely one of those issues (like driving down the middle lane) that has got much worse over the past 10 years.

It is the responsibility of the person joining the dual carriageway / motorway to join safely. You do not have right of way when joining. You should not expect people to slow down or change lanes to allow you to join, as this isn’t always safely possible and you can’t see whether this is from your vantage point of the slip road.

Zipper merging is not an appropriate answer - this is for situations where 2 lanes reduce to one. Neither is barging onto the road obliviously then getting all aggressive when people don’t or can’t make space.

You shouldn’t stop on the slip road unless you have no other choice. You need to get up to speed, then adjust your speed up or down to join the traffic smoothly. If a gap isn’t happening then slow down well before the slip road runs out. This should rarely happen if you do it competently, except on rare occasions when the slip road is very tight and short (there’s a good example of one of these joining the A21 near Tunbridge Wells!).

I think we need the definitive answer, just how many vehicles merging rom the slip road should a driver on the dual carriageway allow? One? Four? 37?

And your opinion is why there are so many crap drivers on the road who have no idea how to merge onto a trunk road safely.

they should be marked differently - a junction should have give way markings at the joining point - a slip road will have the 'inter-lane' markings as it is two lanes coming alongside each other... it will be down to subtlety of length of dashes etc.

you will also see a difference in cats eyes - where you can go across an acceleration or de-acceleration lane boundary (start or end of slip road) you will have green cats eyes - they can't be used for a give way or stop junction...

This has been done to death on Mumsnet. I've been driving on motorways and trunk roads regularly for over 20 years. I'm just an average driver with a small hatchback. I'm struggling to think of even 5 times when I've had a difficulty merging from a slip road or someone cutting in front of me.

Yes the main carriageway does have priority, but you are also meant to look ahead and be alert for hazards, such as entries and exits and adjust your driving to keep everyone safe. If there's a lot of traffic merging the traffic will automatically slow down anyway.

Not sure your logic is terribly good 😁

If you are in a 5m car and there is a 12m lorry next to you and your front bumpers are level - does it need more room to move ahead of the lorry (5m needed) or to drop back behind the lorry (12m needed)

now think about 4 cars nose to tail each of 5m - i.e. 20m of cars
do you need more room to move clear ahead (5m)
or to fall back behind them (20m)

so it needs 4x as much room to fall back as to move forwards... your logic is terribly flawed!

what you also do not take into account is other traffic around OP - clearly she had space ahead - but if cars behind were close then she may not have had 20m space behind, so she would have had to create it by braking and causing a pile-up!

what OP did was move ahead by enough to let the lead car in - if the other three then crashed into someone - not her issue - i.e. she was thoughtful and considerate to give any space to the arrogant drivers coming down the slip road!

well done OP - just a shame to live in a world of so many people who have seemingly very little idea how to drive - can I suggest that next time you stop them (after all they seem to think that stopping on the motorway is fine!) and give them a copy of the Highway Code - you could even pop a bookmark in so that they can read the relevant section... failing that I would suggest wheel knives a bit like those on Boudicea's chariot!

The point of a slip road is that traffic on the slip road matches their speed to the traffic on the road and zippers in. You aren't supposed to stop on a sliproad unless traffic on the main road is very slow or stationary.

As a driver on the main road if traffic isn't very heavy then you are unaffected. If traffic is very heavy then you should be slowing down anyway because it's not safe to barrel along at the speed limit if there isn't enough road space in front of you for a good 2 seconds of stopping distance and if you are observing that rule then there's plenty of space for a car to zipper in in front of you (and yes you do then need to slow a little to get your 2 second gap back, or if space you can pull out into the right hand lane. Obviously the addition of more cars into the road can slow down the prevailing speed if the road is reaching its capacity. That's normal.

The kind of situation where what is described in the OP is hazardous is if people on the main road (OP included) are zooming along at or above the speed limit with very small amounts of road space between cars

The hazard is when multiple tailgating cars attempt to merge onto the trunk road as per the OP, and they don’t leave enough stopping distance as they come down the slip road and don’t adjust their speed accordingly as they merge. They do not have priority - it’s up to them to manage their merge, not the other way about.

This thread highlights why there are so many idiots on the road. I’ve got front and rear dashcams for this very reason.

you are right that is the ideal scenario, the problem comes that people start to assume that it means that both roads have equal priority (zip-merge scenario) where they categorically do not.

Yes, drivers on the main road should adapt - that is good driving, but most drivers look through the lower half of the windscreen at the road just in front of their car and drive in a very reactive way - ideally people would raise their gaze to look through the top half of the windscreen and further ahead - allowing them to drive more predictably - but the roads are full of bad drivers.

From the description - the OP was driving well - she did adapt in the only way possible by moving ahead to give space... but while that is good driving on her part it in no way removes the responsibility of those on the slip road to obey the law and give way if necessary...

as for a 2 second gap - again, a great concept, and if you do police training or high end advanced training, you will be taught about keeping a bubble of space around you... but find me a motorway at busy times where a 2 second gap exists anywhere on the motorway - challenging, and if you do create one, someone enters it!

Where you are wrong is in your last para. the hazard all comes from those on the slip road not knowing how to drive - there is no hazard in a set of flowing traffic - even if less than 2 second gaps and even if at speed - the hazard comes from the disruption and specifically from disruption by idiots who don't know how to drive 😁

"I've never seen a situation where there wasn't a gap and it was necessary to stop on the end of the sliproad"

In contrast, for me, it's a regular occurrence at least a couple of times a week at peak periods.

@CrabSignalArmy i dont want to say but my experience is that, with heavy traffic, people start by refusing the distance between cars and then they start slowly down.
Many times, when traffic increases, I’ve tried to keep, that safety distance only to have a car slotting in between me and the car in front.
Ive noticed that too when it starts raining 🤯🤯

Nowdays, even though a car on the slip road doesn’t have priority, I assume they will act as if. Because most of the time they do.
And I assume the ‘safety distance’ will decrease if the traffic gets heavier because that’s it does and you have to adjust to the cars around you.

It’s a group effect (and not a good one I agree!) rather than isolated individual thing iyswim

It's best to zipper merge, and certainly polite and possibly safer, but in driving lessons you are taught that if you are merging you don't have right of way. You may have to wait.

Good grief..

op shouldn't have been suddenly accelerating OR braking, if the van at the front was slightly in front of her, she should have eased off and created more of a gap for them to enter safely in front of her (re-establishing her stopping distance), the three behind the van (whether tailgating or not) are not able to occupy the space OP was in and would not have just blindly driven into the side of her, they would have joined behind.

there are 4 vehicles being driven independently, just because they appear close to each other, doesn’t mean they intend to blindly join as one, a lot of people coming up slip roads can’t always see the full scope of the traffic on the road until they are alongside it, it doesn’t mean they will blindly join, they need to use their mirrors and blind spot to adjust their speed accordingly, op tried but couldn’t move over, so panicked and accelerated past them instead of letting them adjust their speed to fit in round her, it’s a risky strategy and unnecessary to erratically change speed, especially if you are coming from behind someone as they may not realise your intentions

she should have just held her position and eased off the accelerator to adjust her speed if necessary for anyone joining ahead.

treating 4 cars as one entity was the problem here.

The fundamental flaw in your argument there @sandyhappypeople is that you assume the people joining the motorway are aware of the rules of merging. This thread has shown that many are simple unaware that they have to adjust their speed, keep their distance from the other cars on the slip road and move in around the cars already on the trunk road in turn - they truly believe they have priority. I've seen plenty of examples where lines of cars attempt to move in en masse, which is both stupid and dangerous.

@akkakk is correct - moving past the merging traffic is perfectly acceptable if it creates a gap and if the vehicle size means it's more appropriate. The traffic merging onto the trunk road should be prepared to adjust their speed downwards to tuck in behind, but again many drivers appear to believe that merging means speeding up to get in front of the car immediately to their right.

But you're not driving at "exactly the right speed for the conditions" because you're not slowing down to let one car merge in front of you.

This drives me mad.

When I visit my dad the motorway goes from 3 lanes to two, but the lane that disappears is the junction I come off at so most people move to the right before it.

I have been the only person on the motorway and had a car with no signal and no looking almost go in to me.

You are supposed to stop on the slip road if there is no room. Or in the case above just have a look that there isn't already a car where you want to go.

Because she doesn’t have to slow down to let cars merge!! Slip roads are not a merge in turn.

I think you are making an awful lot of assumptions there ;)

OP was driving along happily - and chose to accelerate to avoid others causing an accident - no panic involved

there is absolutely no ' should have just held her position and eased off the accelerator to adjust her speed if necessary for anyone joining ahead' - you misunderstand the law - the responsibility is on the joining traffic to do the adjusting - in fact it can cause issues when people start to play silly games like that - for example, if the first car was planning to merge in behind OP then her easing off the accelerator would have caused a collision...

it is why we have the law so carefully structured - and why generally one or other party is required to do something because if you require both to do different things / have obligations, then you have a much higher % chance of a crash as you add complexity and introduce more variables - you now have to play a game of will they stay the same / accelerate / brake for both cars - so we now have 9 possible scenarios - whereas if you follow the law and OP on the main carriageway carries on as normal then you have stay the same / accelerate / brake for only one car (the one joining from the slip road) and you have a 1/3 of the complexity with only three scenarios - but reducing the complexity even more - only one of the drivers has to make a decision, so you have 2D choice set with 3 options v. a 3D choice set with 9 options - that is why our law is very clear in what it requires as it reduces the chance of accidents...

of course, when the main carriageway is emptier then moving over as a courtesy makes sense - at that point OP can make a choice which leaves an empty space for the joining car and that driver can just carry on as they are - the choices are reduced, the decision tree has one option now - stay the same... life is easy - but that was not possible in the OP's scenario...

but legally the onus is on the joining driver, not OP

I always aim for that bubble, @akkakk , so I’m very aware of drivers ahead behind and to my right. Add in muppets coming from the left oblivious to the conditions they are joining, and it’s a lot!

I’ve emergency stopped on a Motorway, seen the world slow down dramatically, my arm shoot out left to protect my passenger (pointless instinct) and said ‘sorry guys’ as I thought we weren’t going to stop in time.

Thankfully, the guy behind was also on the ball, hazard lights went on in every direction, and we all got to go home in one piece.

I’ve also had a head on when someone came round a corner on the wrong side. Wrote off both cars. Fire engines to cut her out. Thank God I was going slowly as it was. 30 zone and I was looking for a left turn on an unfamiliar road.

I drive leaving room for other people to make mistakes, and boy do they do just that.

Being right is nice, but it’s no comfort when your car’s written off and you’re lucky to be in one piece.

Everything works better with cooperation but cooperation is NOT assuming everyone else will make room for you to do what you want.

Drivers are morons. I got beeped at recently because a pedestrian walked out in front of me and I stopped. Was I meant to plough into her?

I think this thread highlights the problem caused by motorway driving being only learned as theory by most drivers. I don't know if it's changed now, but when I learned to drive it was illegal to go on the motorway as a learner. Then once you'd passed your test the pass plus lessons which taught motorway driving were optional.

So, you can learn to drive your car, pass your driving test and then go and drive on the motorway that very same day while never actually been taught to drive on it. It's totally insane. So even if it has changed recently, 99% (estimate) of current drivers who use the motorway were never actually formally trained to do so. They just read about it in a book and answered a few multiple choice questions on it (and could get some of them wrong, and still pass). Quite frightening really 😨

I agree @SensibleSigma

I remember once I was on a single lane road doing 50 and a car came up a slip road beside me. He continued right alongside of me to the very end, making no attempt to adjust his speed. I had no way of knowing if he was going in behind me or in front of me, so had no way of knowing if my slowing down to allow him in front or speeding up to allow him in behind me was going to cause an accident when he did move onto the main road. I took the safest course of action which was to continue at a steady speed to allow him to manage his manoeuvre which he did by slowing right down and coming out in behind me because there was no slip road left - but he was not happy with my choice judging by the hand gestures and flashing lights!

Agreed. Paying for extra lessons (including motorway driving) after I had passed my test was worth every penny. I've already told the children they are doing these before I will fund a car

I have read the thread… there is a third option which you don’t seem to have considered is to ease off the accelerator and let them in the gap?

if you were travelling the correct speed and then accelerated were you then speeding?