Did I do anything wrong here? Driving

[Azzywhatty]

I drove home from rural Northumberland today. On a single track road my sat nav fell out of its holder onto the passenger side floor. There was a lorry behind me. I continued along the single track road until it widened into two lanes, then indicated left, slowed down and stopped so I could pick it back up.

The lorry behind me beeped as I stopped. Did I do anything wrong here? I indicated and slowed and waited until the road went back to two lanes and it was safe to stop. I can’t work out why he was beeping.

There was no other traffic in either direction.

YANBU - you did nothing wrong
YABU - you did something wrong (what and why??)

So if you want to park on the road outside of your house, what do you do? Drive past so as not to cause anyone to have to stop or overtake?

I personally as a mere man cannot see that you have done anything wrong. Maybe the lorry driver was just giving you a thumbs up for getting out of his way.

A word of warning OP - the announcement of Heathrow runway 3 is not an invite to park there 😀

"But it’s easier to simply dismiss everyone who disagrees with you I guess…"

Pot kettle black.

Multiple posters have said you should never stop on the road unless there is a layby or a marked parking area.

I also do a lot of mileage on rural roads like those in the OP's pictures and much worse. The idea that nobody ever needs to pull over and that everyone drives ten miles in random directions until they find a parking space is for the birds.

Incidentally your suggestion of pulling in by a gate - that is still parking on the road. Gates are not marked parking bays or parking areas, even if some tourists seem to think they are.

Plenty of people have been dismissing people who disagree with them on this thread 😅

I never said you can’t pull over on a country road by the way, simply that OP was probably unwise to do so in the particular circumstances described.

A few people did think to do so was illegal - which is not true - but many of them were probably confused by the road type being discussed at the start of the thread. Others were just wrong.

Your comment that people who didn’t think she should have stopped where she did “presumably never visit friends, stop outside shops and all have private drives and garages …apparently none of them have ever visited suburbia or small towns either” just remains silly, sorry.

It’s not the same sort of situation at all and a driver needs to use common sense and good judgement as well as their knowledge of the rules of the road. The fact that OP is also comparing her experience with the lorry to parking in an suburban housing estate etc…well, frankly it doesn’t fill me with confidence that her judgment was sound on the occasion being discussed. They’re different situations and should be treated as such.

As I was driving home from work yesterday I thought about this thread and I couldn't believe the number of people dangerously pulled over at the side of the live lane of the A61 making me risk my safety overtaking them and having to move over the line into the oncoming traffic's live lane. I leaned on my horn the whole way home. I hope the police catch up to the drivers and they all have their licences confiscated. Parking outside Tesco, or making a phone call, or parking outside your house or consulting a map is NO EXCUSE.

I wanted to pull in to post this but there are no passing places on the A61 and there was a car behind me so I had to drive all the way home.

I hope you had a drive you could swing straight into without making any car behind you slow down or stop. They may not have been expecting it.

They are different - there are usually more than two cars on suburban roads.

multiple posters have said you should never stop on the road unless there is a layby or a marked parking area.

Who has said that? I think you'd be hard pushed to find anyone who has actually said that on here.. but if you fancy quoting some I'd be interested.

What HAS been happening is people are commenting perfectly good statements about finding somewhere to pull off the road when you have a large lorry behind you so as not to inconvenience them, or cause them to potentially hit you from behind if they don't actually see you, have been met with such mind numbingly stupid comments in response, like this one from OP herself earlier:

So if you want to park on the road outside of your house, what do you do? Drive past so as not to cause anyone to have to stop or overtake?

OP doesn't want to admit that she was inconsiderate in pulling up where she did obstructing a lorry behind her who wouldn't have been expecting her to come to stop where she did, which is fair enough, she hasn't done anything wrong or illegal, but it was a little risky and very inconsiderate.

You can't argue with inconsiderate people though, they do what they like when they like and fuck everyone else, there's obviously quite a few on here that just don't 'get it', and that's fine.. but next time you get beeped at again for doing something unpredictable on the road, don't blame anyone else but yourselves.

You shouldn't have stopped at all until you were able to pull into a hard shoulder or layby

Yes you did do something wrong, you don't stop in the middle of a lane! As a PP has pointed out, stop in a lay by or other parking place

You can't just block a lane to stop OP. You should have waited for a layby.

If a car couldn't continue forwards in the lane you were currently in, you were blocking it. One lane is still a section of road. Unless you were pulled into hard shoulder or completely out of the lane you were blocking the road

you were in the “moving” section of the road and you stopped. This isn’t ok. Using hazards to indicate that you’ll be coming to a stop in a “moving” section of the road would’ve made it better as other road users would’ve known what to expect.

There are 5 examples from the first two pages.

My favourite part of this thread is @Boskit hammering blows to the OP non stop until they f up and post that 'motorway' link 😂followed by deadly silence. Oops

You can only stop on a single carriageway (one with two lanes only, in opposite directions) in an emergency

One more for luck!

I am massively procrastinating.

Pulling onto your drive, next to your house is VERY different to pulling over on a 60mph limit country road! Honestly OP get a grip! Stop making all roads sound like the country road you dangerously stopped on!

Those first 4 are all referring to a dual carriageway which a lot of people thought OP meant originally. This is absolutely correct advice for dual carriageways/motorways.. she was given this advice a lot in the beginning until she posted a picture of the type of road.

I gave similar advice because I thought she meant dual carriageway, she said the road 'widened into two lanes' in her OP, so I completely missed the reference to single track lane that came before it and assumed it went from a single to a dual carriageway.

There's no point quoting people who were quite obviously referring to 'lanes' of a dual carriageway, because the advice they were given is correct anyway, it's the situation they misunderstood.

Not sure about no. 5, that doesn't mention "never stop on the road unless there is a layby or a marked parking area" so doesn't really fit what you said either.

okay I'll give you that one! 😂

It's kind of you to not quote the poster!

😁I don't even know why I'm posting! Just avoiding other tasks I think!

I think you have just spoken for you and (at least) half of mumsnet.. myself included! 😎

And how do you pull off the road? You signal, slow, and turn. So why wouldn’t the lorry hit me in that scenario, but would in the real life one?

I love the idea of the whole nation driving continuously until they find either a single track lane or a dual carriageway to park on.

And what if you don’t have a drive?

There were no cars going at 60mph.

What do you do if you come across an empty parked car on the roadway?
I was out this morning and I came across several.

Here's a 60mph road near me.

If you zoom in closely to the big tree on the left, you'll see a little white sign on a post.

That, believe it or not, is a bus stop.

Could you describe how a bus might stop to pick up passengers?

The driver throws a rope out, the passengers grab it, get slammed to the side of the bus (what with the 60mph speed), then the driver brakes sharply (cos OP has JUST PARKED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD), which richochets the aforementioned rope-clasping passengers forward, hopefully allowing them to throw themselves in the door.

It's common place around here.

Well the bus would just have to keep going until it came to a safe spot, maybe a petrol station, and pull over there, obvs 😜