Pulled over for my actions after driver that pulled out on me from a slip road.. – Page 5 – Chat Forum

martinxyz · 2014-01-07T20:28:54Z

Driving home tonight,I'm approaching a slip road on a dual carriageway. I'm going 60-65mph and a car appears at the slip road and decided to pull out. Without altering my speed I need to now pull around him as he's pulled into the left lane. I pass him and start to pull back in but also having to accelerate a little as I noticed his lights tilting with the way he booted it. So he's now behind me,very close,and full beam has come on. This is after he pulls out of a junction making me alter my direction of driving. I am pretty annoyed at this full beam malarky after he pulled out on me and put his lights on. 'Apparently he braked and the police van behind him 'nearly went up the back end of him too' Not long after, I get pulled over by the police and they ask me if I know why I was pulled over. I reply with a No. One of them tells me that I was 'millimeters' from the front of the guys car when I pulled back in. They then went on to explain that the way slip roads work, it's common decency to pull out to the right lane to let them filter in. I told them that I used to do this but have recently changed as I've had a moment at the slip road a few miles back from the one in question when I couldn't pull over as cars were already in the right lane, yet the driver still pulled out of a Junction into the flow of traffic. I told them that I had changed my ways on this because its a junction just like a T junction, and cars should join the flow of traffic at similar speeds without causing change in direction or speed of the cars already on it. They agreed and seemed to accept my ways on this matter. I think! If I decided not to alter my speed I'd have been into the back of the guy earlier tonight (hardly likely to do that for spite) but at the same time I still had to pull into the other lane to avoid him as I wasn't going to start braking with cars behind me when I can go around him. So I get pulled over for pulling back into the lane I was already in, too close to a car that's pulled out of a junction and accelerated up to speed and come close to me. Do I then have to slow down and shoulder check to find a way back into the left lane which I was already in, now 2,3,5 cars back from where I was seconds before? Or do I pull back in to the lane in front of the car that just pulled out from the slip road? I decided to go around it, to avoid braking/altering my speed as there were other cars in the left lane behind me. I could have gone on and on with them (the police) and to be fair, they were seeing it from my point of view for most of it. I asked at what point after a 90 degree T junction is it acceptable for these people to just indicate and filter out willy nilly without even knowing what the cars might have trouble with in the 2nd lane if they too had to pull out? It's wrong to do so and I told them I choose this approach to stop the bad habits from taking over completely. I think they agreed that a car should wait until it's safe to join at similar speeds but at the same time they were giving me the impression with their words that it might be safer to join in the fun and do this common courtesy thing all the time to save these issues. This is the bit that peeves me off, that the guy that pulled out of a junction in the first place had caused all this, even after I had gone into the other lane for him. My reactions were a big WTF when the blue lights came on! Having sat a motorcycle test and had my fingers rapped during one of the lessons leading up to it for pulling out of a short slip road on the motorbike about 150ft in front of a lorry and not waiting for it to pass,it's just confusing. I was told to slow right down or possibly come to a stop if it wasn't safe to pull out from short slip roads. I now never pull out of slip roads after that lesson. If a driver is in the slip road and see's cars approaching in the mirror, they don't know for sure what cars are approaching in the outside lane so they are expecting one car to pull out for them without knowing if that car in lane 1 also has to shift lanes. It's madness and it's wrong. Quite liked how they told me that they nearly hit the guy from behind (maybe because you were driving too close?!) then after we all drove off, he was approx 25ft from the car in front of him in a 50 zone.. having passed me over 50,in a 50 zone. Feel free to attack me. *also for posting in the wrong forum :O)

matt_outandabout

Posts: 46131

Full Member

Was the car on a conveyor belt at the time?

Posted : 09/01/2014 9:23 am

Solo

Posts: 0

Free Member

[i]Was the car on a conveyor belt at the time?[/i]

Ah ! only the time served STW forumite would understand this.
😉

I think the issue was the car was trying to join the conveyor belt, but the wheels might not have been rotating at the correct speed to facilitate a harmonious synchronisation during its transition from being off the conveyor belt to being on the conveyor belt.

Posted : 09/01/2014 10:48 am

Anonymous

Posts: 0

I see no error or contradiction in my previous statement, irc. I said “any officer in uniform can stop any vehicle”; anything beyond a S163 stop (and subsequent Sections) needs [url= http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1984/60/section/4 ]PACE S4 [/url] authorisation, which I summarised as “needing reasonable suspicion of something other than a road traffic or vehicle excise offence”, there is [b]nothing[/b] which entitles an officer to detain a driver for the purposes of just giving them a ‘telling off’.

(I am) … suggesting to people that 'ordinary officers' have no powers for road traffic offences.

Whut? Congrabulationz for winning STW's 'collosal misinterpretion of a sentence' award. In no way did I suggest that; I said that beyond powers already outlined above, the only [i]remaining[/i] powers to stop vehicles are those given to DTO’s by the TMA, and that VOSA / HA can only do so for unsafe loads / drivers hours / etc.

At at the risk of repeating myself – whilst any officer in uniform or DTO can stop any vehicle (for reasons done to death), [u]they can’t lawfully pull drivers over and detain them just for a telling off[/u].

I encourage you to try that line in court to see just how wrong you are.

I do ‘try that line’ actually. Most recently being summonsed for about 8 alleged motoring offences after being stopped and detained for no reason (they didn’t even do me the courtesy of making something up), with my car also being given a thorough going over – all done by non-traffic officers, who had no training on correct procedure, using devices with no training, no authorisation, and the devices themselves had no type-approval / up-to-date certificates / calibrations; in other words they thought they could stop some random driver, give them a good going over, with absolutely no consideration as to the consequences of their actions if the driver elected to hear the allegations in court ... which I naturally did. The letter of apology I eventually got from the C.C. was very nice.

This is [i]precisely[/i] why police have dedicated traffic officers who are trained and authorised specifically for traffic duties (beyond powers already mentioned) in order to carry out their duties safely and to the required standard, and if necessary, to collect information which can be used in court.

This is why you don’t, or rather shouldn’t, see panda cars / police vans / CSU’s stopping drivers, the main reason being any half-decent solicitor – as I did myself – can easily get thrown out of court any allegations of wrong-doing based on information obtained as a result of a 'bad stop'; consider Nick Freeman as an extreme (or successful, depending on how you view him) example of this.

Oy, a whole lunch hour gone. So, like I said earlier: -

If it was a 'normal' police van they shouldn't really be pulling cars

Posted : 09/01/2014 4:04 pm

[Closed] Pulled over for my actions after driver that pulled out on me from a slip road..