Motorway merge fail??

I am looking at that again. Ignoring the speed readout on the camera (given that its GPS powered which can have anomalies), the truck may not have sped up. Keep your eyes on either the bridge or the passing lamp posts and it looks like the HGV maintains their speed. Even the dashed white lines on the slip road to appear to move any faster.

It may look like it speeds up due to the Focus hammering the brakes (see the brake lights come on).
 
Richie said:
I am looking at that again. Ignoring the speed readout on the camera (given that its GPS powered which can have anomalies), the truck may not have sped up. Keep your eyes on either the bridge or the passing lamp posts and it looks like the HGV maintains their speed.

It may look like it speeds up due to the Focus hammering the brakes (see the brake lights come on).
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Neigh you can use the parallax of the wiper blade to the car in front as a yard stick. It clearly rises from bellow the tyres over the road surface, to over the car in fronts bumper.

Plus you can see a literal 'whooshing' as the lorry speeds up, AND the acceleration causes the suspension to lift slightly. You can't argue away the facts, it is speeding up.
 
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So much fail in this thread.

Lets put down the armchair guide to the road from readers digest and look at some facts.

1. At a motorway JUNCTION the car MUST stop if the way isn't clear. He didn't.

2. I'm not a lorry driver, but I don't think they can stop on a six pence. Neither should he have to.

3. Take a look at this Notice how the stopping distance for a truck at 30 is nearly twice that of the car?

The court found in favour of the lorry driver because the car driver didn't act rationally. They slowed then accelerated. If the lorry driver felt they were slowing down, then he would carry on.

This has been decided by a court, not spotty armchair experts sat behind a screen.
 
BunnyKillBot said:
Neigh you can use the parallax of the wiper blade to the car in front as a yard stick. It clearly rises from bellow the tyres over the road surface, to over the car in fronts bumper.
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You want to judge movement of one vehicle by using another vehicle that is also moving and whose speed also varies i.e. is possibly slowing down to let the car in, in front of them? :confused:

Surely the only way to judge speed change of a vehicle is to use stationary, equally placed objects to do it.
 
Everyone is banging on about being settled in court but the article states both that the footage was used to settle the dispute and that it was recorded a month before.

Correct me if I'm wrong but insurance disputes don't tend to go to court 4-6 weeks after the incident.

I suspect what it actually means is they used the footage to get the cars insurance to admit liability.

Regardless of the above and however much the fault is legally that of the car, it doesn't change the fact both parties had the opportunity to avoid a collision and both displayed poor driving.
 
BunnyKillBot said:
Neigh you can use the parallax of the wiper blade to the car in front as a yard stick. It clearly rises from bellow the tyres over the road surface, to over the car in fronts bumper.

Plus you can see a literal 'whooshing' as the lorry speeds up, AND the acceleration causes the suspension to lift slightly. You can't argue away the facts, it is speeding up.
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Do you live in the UK, suspension lifting could be down to road surface, inside lanes are a POS where HGV's live...
 
Awful driving all round, there.

As soon as that car entered the slip road, the driver should have been looking for the best place to merge. I expect in reality he or she was just tootling along in their own little world and at the last minute thought they'd try to squeeze in and 'oh bugger'.
 
Jono8 said:
Why did the lorry speed up just before the Focus was about to pass and merge? Bit of a **** thing to do.
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I think at that point he was thinking the car driver was braking and thus was going to merge behind him. Him speeding up would gave helped that. However it appears the car changed its mind and then tried to merge in front
 
mejinks said:
This has been decided by a court, not spotty armchair experts sat behind a screen.
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Actually no, it's been decided by two insurance companies who didn't want the faff of court, which rather undermines your rant I think. It's somewhat difficult to hold the moral highground against the 'armchair experts' when you have taken to making things up to suit the point you are trying to make.

Nobody is saying the car driver is anything other than a turnip who caused the accident. The point is that the truck driver didn't help things either. He could have taken actions to avoid the accident but for whatever reason, didn't.
 
The lorry driver is not psychic.

He's left a reasonable gap, there's no real attempt to match speed and move into the gap, then the car driver brakes.

How do you react to that?

My instinctive reaction to that would be the car has bottled it and wants to drop in behind. If I speed up, that's helpful to the car because I'll be past him quicker. If you slow, you could end up stranding the car at the end of the slip road.

You also have no idea what's behind the truck. It could be another truck way too close. Slamming on the anchors could cause a bigger accident.
 
common sense says give people room to join.

is it one of those codes that had been written in the 60s or something and hasn't been adapted to modern roads
 
Surely you wouldnt slam into the lorry? just head straight through the cones and stop safely?
 
@OP. What makes this a "Motorway Merge"?

It's a UK motorway, therefore the lines between the slip road and the Motorway indicate Give Way. If the joining vehicle cannot safely join the motorway, it should wait until it can, even if that means coming to a stop. Car driver screwed up.
 
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