Dude almost side swipes me. Whose at fault?

vbx

Member
Joined
Jun 22, 2013
Messages
240
Reaction score
22
Country
United States
Me for not letting him in? Or him for not paying damn attention?

Luckily for me, I had room to merge onto the next lane to avoid the collision. I also honked at him so he probably stopped merging onto my side of the lane. It was close.

 
EDIT: My mistake, can ignore all this now...

I don't know how it is in the US, but, in the UK it is common courtesty to let people merge onto a motorway into your lane if and only if the lane next to you is clear (from your video above, it was) and you will not inconvenience anyone else by doing so. Traffic on the motorway still has right of way, however, compared to those who are attempting to join, who must give way (I believe the term you would use is yield?). If the vehicle on the motorway does not move over or slow down for whatever reason, joining traffic must always give way or look for another gap, even if that means coming to a complete stop at the end of the slip road (merge lane?) if the motorway traffic is busy enough.

In other words, if that had been filmed the UK, what you did would be considered rude, however, completly legal and they would be in the wrong.
 
Last edited:
The front video is a bit overexposed, so it's hard to judge, but isn't there a perfectly clear lane he could have gone ahead in?
You started in the left lane of two, and never moved right.
Surely that right hand lane doesn't become unavailable at the same time the slip road ends???
 
I don't know how it is in the US, but, in the UK it is common courtesty to let people merge onto a motorway into your lane if and only if the lane next to you is clear (from your video above, it was) and you will not inconvenience anyone else by doing so.
Something that's often forgotten:
 
Ah I see now, yeah that over exsposure is hiding the lanes a bit. So, looking at it again, seems they should have been merging into the lane on your right, but instead, carried on and tried to merge into your lane also. Not your fault at all and not rude of you if it had been in the UK, just really bad driving on their part.
 
Here that would be a 50/50 event as per the vague traffic code we have.

The guy on the on ramp should adjust his speed with traffic on road so he can merge effortless, but also here the ppl on the road just cant ignore ppl on the on ramp so they also have to do the same or maybe if possible pull left to open the right hand lane.

Looking again at the distance from his car to the wall along the road it is clear that he is pulling hard into your lane, and so i think he would be to blame here as you as the driver on the road are allowed to assume he will keep to his lane / lanes over there and not do stupid stuff like that.
 
As I remember
- if merging lane "ends" ( runs out ) and ...
- if car speed on merging lane is same as your car speed and his car is one car length in front of you and
- he turned on indicator light at least 3 sec before merging ...
then you must let him to merge.

In OP case:

YES - if merging lane "ends" ( runs out ) and ...
NO - if car speed on merging lane is same as your car speed and his car is one car length in front of you and
NO - he turned on indicator light at least 3 sec before merging ...

In this case merging lane car driver fault !
 
I see a lot of accidents or near accidents from people doing a rapid lane change to get out of the way of somebody trying to occupy the space they're in. You can end up in an accident that's your fault, trying to avoid one that isn't your fault. You've got the dash cams. He's not paying attention, not using a turn indicator. You can guess he wants to merge in your lane, but I also see the scenario pretty often in setups like this one where the traffic enters the highway, stays on the on ramp, which turns into an exit ramp...and gets off at the next exit.
You can always honk and watch for the finger.
:)
 
Merging lane doesn't end until half a mile or so. He can still drive on the lane he was currently on. But at about 1/4 - 1/2 miles ahead, it turns into a "exit only lane".

He had plenty of time to merge safely.

(Perp is on left!) He was on the far right lane which turns into an exit only lane. (the lane near the wall)

MkQ9qUh.jpg


I just changed my brightness setting to the lowest possible. Hopefully this somewhat fixes the over exposure.
 
Last edited:
I just changed my brightness setting to the lowest possible. Hopefully this somewhat fixes the over exposure.
Yes Taurus driver would have been completely at fault. You had no obligation to move left till he started entering your lane.

Hopefully turning down the brightness won't ruin the camera's night vision
 
Good job. I experience that event often. My dad taught me to make sure you merge into an "empty" lane. "I hope they let me in" said an old girlfriend. Always better to avoid an incident that figuring out who's to blame.

I suggest you kill the sound. Hadn't thought of it before, but having audio of phone ringing, etc. when you afterwards desperately depend on the video may not bode well.
 
Hmmm Here in Oz we are supposed to leave room for cars entering ..
Which can be hard and dangerous when their entry speed is ridiculously slow ( And no room to leave the lane your in = heavy traffic )
Thats why accidents occur ... Some people can't merge for ISIS .... ( Australians are horrible at merging ) We have so many accidents where two lanes have to merge for what ever reason ( Say road works )
And we get traffic jams that are 10 to 20 miles long because of the mental midgets that can't merge ...
 
Our highway code is easy to use.
  • give priority to traffic already on the motorway
  • check the traffic on the motorway and match your speed to fit safely into the traffic flow in the left-hand lane
So, if there's a long line of HGVs in lane 1, they will be going no faster than 56mph - easy enough for most vehicles to match that & slot into a gap. If you see a huge gap at the front, it's easy for a car to get to 60mph & pull in front or slow down, slot in behind then put your foot down to get by later.
A long line of cars should be doing around 65 - 70mph, again, easy enough for any car to match.

In the case of the OP, the car joining should've simply eased off the gas & pulled in behind OR put their foot down to get safely ahead.
 
Our highway code is easy to use.
  • give priority to traffic already on the motorway
  • check the traffic on the motorway and match your speed to fit safely into the traffic flow in the left-hand lane
So, if there's a long line of HGVs in lane 1, they will be going no faster than 56mph - easy enough for most vehicles to match that & slot into a gap. If you see a huge gap at the front, it's easy for a car to get to 60mph & pull in front or slow down, slot in behind then put your foot down to get by later.
A long line of cars should be doing around 65 - 70mph, again, easy enough for any car to match.

In the case of the OP, the car joining should've simply eased off the gas & pulled in behind OR put their foot down to get safely ahead.
rules about merging are pretty much the same here. to me, it seems like common sense - match the speed of the vehicles in the lane you want to get into BEFORE you get in that lane. otherwise it's difficult for everyone.
 
Kudos to both replies above! Here in SC everybody drives over the speed limit on the freeways, but when it comes to merging onto them they don't want to go over the speed limit so they get to the end of the ramp and stop, even though they could have easily gotten into traffic if they had a functioning brain. The cars behind them end up going by on the outside, skidding to a stop to miss hitting the idiot, or swerve quickly into the freeway traffic to avoid the mess ahead.

Unfortunately the DMV does not check for functional brains before handing out driving licenses here and we have a high percentage of brain-dead people on our roads :( Of all driving, freeway driving is the simplest, smoothest, and fastest when done correctly but all it takes is one idiot to cause miles of trouble :mad:

Phil
 
^^^ yeah, to be fair, we have a few of them over here as well.
 
I just changed my brightness setting to the lowest possible. Hopefully this somewhat fixes the over exposure.

not sure about your brightness but you have a focus issue, left side of image is good, right side is very soft
 
not sure about your brightness but you have a focus issue, left side of image is good, right side is very soft

Thanks, didn't even notice that. Let me see if Blackvue has something to say about this focus issue.
 
Back
Top