I had one majorly close call on the way into work this morning.
M4 westbound approaching a series of lorries and a junction I moved into the middle lane behind a van doing 70. Both middle and right hand lanes full of cars. The right hand lane started slowing up significantly whilst the middle lane remained at 70 (causing the center cars to start passing those in the right lane). Then a car sweeps into the middle lane inches in front and going slower than me (maybe he was trying to exit the motorway?) I had to slam on the brakes and swerve to the right to avoid hitting him but as the road was damp the wheels locked and I ended up skidding sideways down the middle lane of a congested M4. Fortunatly I managed to pull the car straight again and got over to the hard shoulder witout hitting anyone. I'm damn glad I was on the ball this morning!
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yikes OP, well done - sounds like your trousers were the only casualty.
What difference do you think ABS would have made?
CF
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Thank goodness for brown trousers!
Not sure if ABS would have helped or not. It may have reduced the skid but then I could have been heading towards the central resavation a lot quicker rather than traveling sideways down my own lane.
It's kind of hard to analyse what happened - instinct just takes over and you end up so focused at the time that it's hard to remember everything - I couldn't tell you for sure what kind or colour car pulled in front of me!
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Did the offending driver stop? Or just carry on blissfully unaware of the mayhem behind (never did work out what that mirror-thingy on the windscreen is for)?
Sounds like everyone else did a good job of avoiding you OP.
Anyone want to wag a finger and say "Highway Code... no undertaking"? (Not me.)
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It's not undertaking, it's proceeding in his queue of traffic while another queue of traffic slows down. If anything, by attempting to change queues when his was slowing, the other driver was guilty of undertaking.
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Well done for avoiding it - never drive faster than your guardian angel can fly!
If I was being really picky, I'd say that better observation might have alerted you to the hazard so you wouldn't have had to jam on the brakes - if your queue is traveling faster than the one on the right then expect someone to pull in, maybe limit your passing speed to 5mph faster than the other lane then you've only got to scrub off 5mph from your speed? Look into the other cars and see if the drivers are distracted by passengers, kids, phone, changing the CD. Be aware of if you're coming up to an exit. Look for the car not being central in the lane, sometimes cars drift about in the direction they're about to go because the car goes where the driver looks to a certain extent.
Having said all that, I'm sure we've all done it and maybe most wouldn't have reacted as well as you did.
Gareth
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Nobody else stopped, I'm not sure where the other car ended up (or even if he noticed) but I suspect he got off at the junction I can't think of another likely reason why he would change lanes like that.
I recall another thread from a while back about what consitutes undertaking. For my part I wouldn't deem maintaining a steady (non speeding) speed without changing lanes to be undertaking, although I do tend to ease off in those situations. Braking in order to match speed with the cars on the right of you though is just as likely to cause someone to run up the back of you.
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Braking in order to match speed with the cars on the right of you though is just as likely to cause someone to run up the back of you.
True, but with good forward observation (maybe you were too close to the van in front and it blocked your vision?) you can see what the traffic is doing and lift off the throttle gently.
I only guess at a 5mph passing speed, maybe 10mph is ok too. But I'm sure you'd start to feel vunerable if your passing speed was 40mph for example.
Gareth
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Whilst I agree in principal with what you are saying, Garethj, I have to face this scenario on a daily basis; and limiting my 'undertaking' speed to 5 mph is highly likely to result in someone modifiying the rear end of my Omega - probably a 38t truck.
It really does appear to be a no win scenario under these circumstances; the best I can do is to keep an eye on the queued traffic, as you suggest, and cover the brake; even though I know that hitting the brakes is likely to result in me being tailgated. :-/
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Plenty of threads on here about what to do if you're being tailgated, I think the safest one (not the one to get the best revenge / teach the other guy a lesson etc) was to slowly back off your speed so you don't have to brake hard anyway.
I agree, putting it into practice all the time isn't easy!
Gareth
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