Any tips for these two awkward DC/Mway situations?

[RobM77]

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

[RobM77]

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 ). 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...

[RobM77]

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).

[RobM77]

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.

As above, this is what I've been trying to do, but if they slow much below about 20-30mph, I've got no chance of joining the DC at 60mph+ because my car can't accelerate that quickly. I guess that there's a threshold whereby it's safer for me to actually stop than to match their speed and end up on the DC at 25mph. I reckon I could get to 35-40mph from stationary in the space available. The problem with stopping is that I risk being rear ended by traffic joining the slip road...

[RobM77]

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!

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!

[RobM77]

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 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.

If I might hold anyone up, then I always go from my usual 65 to 70 to make overtaking a 60mph lorry quicker. However, after reading the advice on this thread I've started doing it with everyone, even on an empty road, and it seems to be working well so far

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.