Safe Speed Forums

Saw a near miss today on my way home from work. On the M40 S/B coming up to Junction 9, at the point where the line separating lanes 1 and 2 changes to indicate that lane1 will be disappearing off to Oxford soon.

I'm in Lane 2 having just overtaken a few cars, and I'm being overtaken by another car in lane 3, there is another car in lane 1 in front of me that is speeding up for whatever reason when the line style changes.

At this point, the car that just overtook me is exactly level with the car in lane 1, right indicator on the L1 car comes on at exactly the same time as the left indicator on the L3 car, and they both start to move into L2 at exactly the same time, getting a few feet apart before swerving back into their original lanes (the L3 car nearly knocking off a motorbike that couldn't wait another 30 seconds to overtake)

So, assuming they both looked, they would have seen a clear lane with no-one indicating to change into it, then signalled and started to move (MSM)

Whose fault would that be then, and how best to avoid such accidents since you don't really want to be staring out of the side window during a lane change in case someone stops in front of you. I'd but slightly more blame on the L3 guy since it's reasonable to expect a lot of people to be moving from L1 to L2 at that point, but it's still pretty much 50/50 and this type of colission could just as easilly happen at points where L1 isn't about to disappear.

They appear to be equally to blame. But it's easy to avoid:

1) Do a proper blind spot 'over the shoulder' check. (shoulder check).

2) Suspend overtaking and lane changing whenever possible near slips and merges.

3) Be extra vigilant near slips and merges.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Agree with Paul - I think we've al been in that situation, I know I have, where two vehicles decide to take the same lane at the same time. The only way to avoid it is to make proper observation THROUGHOUT the menuoever, nut just at the beginning. I also agree that the blame would be 50/50.

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

Happens every day on the A19 Tees flyover

The new D6M section of M25 is particularly bad for this, since it's very difficult to get a proper view of the traffic from a quick glance over the shoulder, so it's easy to misjudge which lane people are in and who is and isn't indicating, and thus this kind of accident is unfortunately more likely.

I'd tend to say the bloke in L3 has a duty to be expectant of lane swaps between L1/L2 given the circumstance. Thats how I drive anyway, although like you say nobody's 100% blameless.

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Fear is a weapon of mass distraction

Do you mean the A66/A19 intersection, AKA The Wacky Races?