Any tips for these two awkward DC/Mway situations?
Discussion
I currently drive about 400-500 miles a week, mainly on dual carriageway and motorway, and I find myself in the following two situations two or three times a week. What would you do?
1) You join a fairly short, single lane slip road for a DC and there's someone up ahead on the sliproad doing 30mph and getting slower, maybe even stopping. What do you do? L1 of the DC is fairly light traffic, so loads of gaps, and moving at 60-70mph.
2) You're at in L1 with the cruise set to 70mph and you come up behind another vehicle doing 60mph, so you check around, indicate, move over and start the overtaking manoeuvre. This should be easy and quick at a 10mph differential. The only problem is, this vehicle you're overtaking starts speeding up as you're alongside and very soon you're driving next to each other at 70mph. What's more, in the extra time this has added to your overtake, you've gained traffic up behind you. What do you do? Break the speed limit to get in front of the L1 vehicle and then risk annoying them by slowing back to 70mph? Or risk irritating those behind you by slowing down and tucking back behind the now faster vehicle and re-engaging cruise?
I'd love to hear any tips as it'd make my commute much easier
1) You join a fairly short, single lane slip road for a DC and there's someone up ahead on the sliproad doing 30mph and getting slower, maybe even stopping. What do you do? L1 of the DC is fairly light traffic, so loads of gaps, and moving at 60-70mph.
2) You're at in L1 with the cruise set to 70mph and you come up behind another vehicle doing 60mph, so you check around, indicate, move over and start the overtaking manoeuvre. This should be easy and quick at a 10mph differential. The only problem is, this vehicle you're overtaking starts speeding up as you're alongside and very soon you're driving next to each other at 70mph. What's more, in the extra time this has added to your overtake, you've gained traffic up behind you. What do you do? Break the speed limit to get in front of the L1 vehicle and then risk annoying them by slowing back to 70mph? Or risk irritating those behind you by slowing down and tucking back behind the now faster vehicle and re-engaging cruise?
I'd love to hear any tips as it'd make my commute much easier
james_gt3rs said:
1) Drop to second gear and once you're on the DC give them a blast of exhaust.
2) Overtake and go back to 70mph, their problem not yours.
Both of these are what I normally do, but both often result in a load of road rage, and I'm always looking for ways to minimise this (by the way, my daily is a diesel, so they get a blast of black smoke, rather than a nice exhaust note 2) Overtake and go back to 70mph, their problem not yours.
). I think in situation 2 they think you're the one who's changed their speed and they've been constant throughout, thus the road rage. In situation 1 they just think you're a boy racer for wanting to join a DC at 60-70...I ignore any speed limit where safety would be reduced by rigidly sticking to them. No, not a Carte Blanch to speed, but say 10sec at 80mph, as long as you have good visibility, road positioning and clearance to cars around you, in order to open and maintain a safety bubble around your car is a no-brainer, compared to sticking to some arbitrary limit dreampt up 60 years ago, and often with little or no relevance to todays driving conditions.
For slip road dawdlers, you have two options:
1) overtake them decisively before you run out of slip road, if there is enough room (needs to be lots of room, because their lane discipline / observation skills are generally also terrible (ETA obviously requires two lane slip road, it's generally a bit dicey to do this on those "two lanes wide but not delineated with white lines into two lanes" kind of slip roads.
2) slow, possibly to a stop, immediately, till they have cleared the slip road and it's safe for you to accelerate to a sensible speed to join the DC safely and smoothly. obviously, the presence of other cars behind you has some bearing on this. For very short slip roads i will actually stop, in a position of visibility of the DC, and hold up people behind me, so i can pick a suitable safe gap in which to join a busy DC. ETA, having a fast car, and understanding how a gearbox works is an advantage here, as these days, a lot of cars can get to say 45 or 50mph around 4 sec only!
It's surprising how many times to see drivers "marooned" at the end of slip roads onto busy DCs, who have dawdled, edged and timidly shuffled down the slip road, failing to find (the generally very obvious) gaps in the traffic, until they become stuck, stationary, with there front bumper hanging out into lane 1. Generally, after about 15 sec of being marooned= here, a sucide "sh*t or bust" lunge out into L1 is performed, resulting in carnage on the DC.....
For slip road dawdlers, you have two options:
1) overtake them decisively before you run out of slip road, if there is enough room (needs to be lots of room, because their lane discipline / observation skills are generally also terrible (ETA obviously requires two lane slip road, it's generally a bit dicey to do this on those "two lanes wide but not delineated with white lines into two lanes" kind of slip roads.
2) slow, possibly to a stop, immediately, till they have cleared the slip road and it's safe for you to accelerate to a sensible speed to join the DC safely and smoothly. obviously, the presence of other cars behind you has some bearing on this. For very short slip roads i will actually stop, in a position of visibility of the DC, and hold up people behind me, so i can pick a suitable safe gap in which to join a busy DC. ETA, having a fast car, and understanding how a gearbox works is an advantage here, as these days, a lot of cars can get to say 45 or 50mph around 4 sec only!
It's surprising how many times to see drivers "marooned" at the end of slip roads onto busy DCs, who have dawdled, edged and timidly shuffled down the slip road, failing to find (the generally very obvious) gaps in the traffic, until they become stuck, stationary, with there front bumper hanging out into lane 1. Generally, after about 15 sec of being marooned= here, a sucide "sh*t or bust" lunge out into L1 is performed, resulting in carnage on the DC.....
Edited by anonymous-user on Thursday 20th October 18:03
I'm with Max_Torque on this; you are concerned that the guy in L1 will get irritated if you drop down to 70 after passing him, as you say though if hes been dawdling along at 60 until you appeared the chances are he will soon drop back down to 60 or simply follow your lead..thats generally what I find happens unless you are unlucky enough to have crossed the path of a homicidal maniac in which case ignore the speed limits and get away pronto!
Regarding your second point, I doubt anyone's ever researched this but it seems an almost natural, unwitting action to match the speed of a vehicle that appears in the right mirror. Generally I prefer to move out to overtake in good time, but just to experiment with my theory I sometimes stay behind them until I'm a little closer. It could be just my imagination but I'm sure there is less acceleration from them & therefore a quicker overtake without increasing speed. Give it a go, see if it works
Regarding the slip road, thank you for the advice above and I bore it in mind on Thursday and Friday. The problem is that the slip road is only long enough for my daily driver to reach 40-50mph tops from rest, which is why it's so frustrating when people stop! I like to join the slip road at around 40mph so I can get up to at least the speed of lane one (preferably a bit quicker, as the poster above suggested).
On slip roads I always manage a large gap between myself and the car in front. The slower my car is, the longer the gap I leave. I want enough room to accelerate to a good speed to join the motorway/DC regardless of what numbnuts in front does. Even in a relatively fast car I'll still hang back as it makes joining easier.
I wouldn't ever bother sticking to 70mph to overtake myself, so a moot point. Overtakes are to be done as quickly as possible, then get back in and out of the way. If clear then pull out, floor it past, then tuck back in and get back down to your cruising speed.
spookly said:
On slip roads I always manage a large gap between myself and the car in front. The slower my car is, the longer the gap I leave. I want enough room to accelerate to a good speed to join the motorway/DC regardless of what numbnuts in front does. Even in a relatively fast car I'll still hang back as it makes joining easier.
That. Even in a fast car you want to have a big gap so you have plenty of space to either accelerate or brake into a gap. If you see a numpty up ahead ease off to try and give yourself a bigger window for merging. 7mike said:
Regarding your second point, I doubt anyone's ever researched this but it seems an almost natural, unwitting action to match the speed of a vehicle that appears in the right mirror.
I'm absolutely convinced of this, after years of observation. I reckon it's because, in non m-way driving, we train ourselves to automatically keep pace with the car ahead, so that it becomes a subconscious task to vary our speed accordingly. This isn't wanted in M-way/DC driving but the subconscious urge is strong, so as soon as a car appears in your vision, you start to match speed with it.davepoth said:
spookly said:
On slip roads I always manage a large gap between myself and the car in front. The slower my car is, the longer the gap I leave. I want enough room to accelerate to a good speed to join the motorway/DC regardless of what numbnuts in front does. Even in a relatively fast car I'll still hang back as it makes joining easier.
That. Even in a fast car you want to have a big gap so you have plenty of space to either accelerate or brake into a gap. If you see a numpty up ahead ease off to try and give yourself a bigger window for merging. 7mike said:
Regarding your second point, I doubt anyone's ever researched this but it seems an almost natural, unwitting action to match the speed of a vehicle that appears in the right mirror. Generally I prefer to move out to overtake in good time, but just to experiment with my theory I sometimes stay behind them until I'm a little closer. It could be just my imagination but I'm sure there is less acceleration from them & therefore a quicker overtake without increasing speed. Give it a go, see if it works
Never really thought about that, interesting!james_gt3rs said:
7mike said:
Regarding your second point, I doubt anyone's ever researched this but it seems an almost natural, unwitting action to match the speed of a vehicle that appears in the right mirror. Generally I prefer to move out to overtake in good time, but just to experiment with my theory I sometimes stay behind them until I'm a little closer. It could be just my imagination but I'm sure there is less acceleration from them & therefore a quicker overtake without increasing speed. Give it a go, see if it works
Never really thought about that, interesting!On long journeys things can get silly - we drove to Devon last year and passed someone just near Swindon on the M4 - we had the cruise on 70 and they were doing about 65 I'd guess. They sped up and passed us a short while after, but then slowed again and ten minutes later we caught them and passed them. We continued this for about an hour, until they got quite nasty about the whole thing: flashing turned to hooting, which turned to middle finger out of the window etc. We were easily recognisable because we had our SUP boards on the roof. It's a good example of how easy it is to attract road rage in the UK... I can't remember what happened in the end - I think after the abuse started we decided to stop for a toilet break at the services!
RobM77 said:
I've often chatted about this with my wife; we wondered if being overtaken wakes people up from their daze and makes them doubt their speed.
On long journeys things can get silly - we drove to Devon last year and passed someone just near Swindon on the M4 - we had the cruise on 70 and they were doing about 65 I'd guess. They sped up and passed us a short while after, but then slowed again and ten minutes later we caught them and passed them. We continued this for about an hour, until they got quite nasty about the whole thing: flashing turned to hooting, which turned to middle finger out of the window etc. We were easily recognisable because we had our SUP boards on the roof. It's a good example of how easy it is to attract road rage in the UK... I can't remember what happened in the end - I think after the abuse started we decided to stop for a toilet break at the services!
It's surprising how annoyed non-cruise vehicles get when drivers of cruise vehicles do this. On long journeys things can get silly - we drove to Devon last year and passed someone just near Swindon on the M4 - we had the cruise on 70 and they were doing about 65 I'd guess. They sped up and passed us a short while after, but then slowed again and ten minutes later we caught them and passed them. We continued this for about an hour, until they got quite nasty about the whole thing: flashing turned to hooting, which turned to middle finger out of the window etc. We were easily recognisable because we had our SUP boards on the roof. It's a good example of how easy it is to attract road rage in the UK... I can't remember what happened in the end - I think after the abuse started we decided to stop for a toilet break at the services!
I annoyed someone in a car (that almost certainly had it but switched off) by swapping places with them about four times on the little stretch of the A31 over the New Forest. The last time I passed them I got some hand gesturing, but their speed was oscillating by 15-20 mph, so it was hard NOT to annoy them.
Johnnytheboy said:
It's surprising how annoyed non-cruise vehicles get when drivers of cruise vehicles do this.
I annoyed someone in a car (that almost certainly had it but switched off) by swapping places with them about four times on the little stretch of the A31 over the New Forest. The last time I passed them I got some hand gesturing, but their speed was oscillating by 15-20 mph, so it was hard NOT to annoy them.
When I am slowly catching a car I'll often add 5mph or so to make a clean pass then drop back to cruise. You will then get that car catching and overtaking just to slow back down again. I think the trick is to maintain the passing speed for long enough to get out of their perception field. Five seconds gap usually does the job.I annoyed someone in a car (that almost certainly had it but switched off) by swapping places with them about four times on the little stretch of the A31 over the New Forest. The last time I passed them I got some hand gesturing, but their speed was oscillating by 15-20 mph, so it was hard NOT to annoy them.
I also wonder if lower powered manuals have a larger speed window on cruise so you end up 2mph quicker up hill and 1mph slower down.
The slip road thing is hard to get around and really is one of those cases where more powerful cars are safer. Trying to get an early read of their driving style while following around the roundabout etc. before the slip and starting to build the gap there might help.
Toltec said:
Johnnytheboy said:
It's surprising how annoyed non-cruise vehicles get when drivers of cruise vehicles do this.
I annoyed someone in a car (that almost certainly had it but switched off) by swapping places with them about four times on the little stretch of the A31 over the New Forest. The last time I passed them I got some hand gesturing, but their speed was oscillating by 15-20 mph, so it was hard NOT to annoy them.
When I am slowly catching a car I'll often add 5mph or so to make a clean pass then drop back to cruise. You will then get that car catching and overtaking just to slow back down again. I think the trick is to maintain the passing speed for long enough to get out of their perception field. Five seconds gap usually does the job.I annoyed someone in a car (that almost certainly had it but switched off) by swapping places with them about four times on the little stretch of the A31 over the New Forest. The last time I passed them I got some hand gesturing, but their speed was oscillating by 15-20 mph, so it was hard NOT to annoy them.
I also wonder if lower powered manuals have a larger speed window on cruise so you end up 2mph quicker up hill and 1mph slower down.
The slip road thing is hard to get around and really is one of those cases where more powerful cars are safer. Trying to get an early read of their driving style while following around the roundabout etc. before the slip and starting to build the gap there might help.
I created this thread last week after an incident with a small lorry on a DC that I was overtaking. The driver refused to let me back in by matching my speed and staying in my LH rear blindspot. He was doing about 55 at the start of the overtake and 70/75 by the end of it - if I'd have just passed him at 70 to start with then the chances of him playing such silly games would be minimised.
AER said:
I thought that was what the hard shoulder was for...
No hard shoulder on a dual carriageway, or an all lanes running smart motorway for that matter.I think when people have someone in front they target fixate as they have something to zero in on and overtake. With nothing in front they chill out and let the speed drop off.
Even angry tailgaters pushing everyone out of the way will often slow down and get under the feet once they've got to the front of the pack
Edited by Blakewater on Wednesday 26th October 20:59
I've often found the slip road problem when joining the A1 southbound from the A46. There is a sharp bend before the slip road, so a lot of people go slowly around the bend and look straight at the traffic and try to pull out at 30mph rather than looking at the massive slip road in front of them that they can accelerate down.
I always leave a large gap ahead on this slip road and often get up to speed and pull out before the car in front of me.
I always leave a large gap ahead on this slip road and often get up to speed and pull out before the car in front of me.
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