ADUK Archive

Here's a scenario I've had a few times but got tooted at for yesterday morning in commuter-traffic.

So you're in a stop-start (or slow crawl) queue of traffic along "main" road, and there's a minor road turning off this road. When you get to the point where you can't progress further without blocking the junction, I tend to hold back before the "T" in order to keep it clear, only progressing when I can then clear the junction entirely.
Occasionally this means you end up waiting a little while if there's a steady stream of drivers emerging, I've even seen people go completely offside past a few cars to save their few minutes wait to reach a turn-right.

But..yesterday morning...I was getting tooted at by a van that was probably inches from my back bumper. I could see they were positioning to go round my offside, but were so close they'd have needed to reverse first. Anyhow, it turned out they wanted to turn left into said junction. In my defence they were so close I couldn't see any of their lights or indicators, and the toots had an air of impatience about them.

So I got thinking afterwards, that had I moved forward to allow them through, I would have ended up blocking the entry for anyone coming from the other direction and wanting to turn right - thus causing an onward blockage.
I'm not sure how I could have handled this better... what might others have done?

In such situations I try to make sure I don't stop where it would block oncoming vehicles on the main road from turning into the side road. So far as traffic emerging from the side road is concerned, I'm happy to let a number out providing they are not going the same way as me. If they are going the same way, I'll generally let only one out.

I would have done the same as you, the vans fault for being so close you could not see his indicator to tell you his intentions.

Even after he beeped, probable was aggressive too, I would still be hesitant to move more forwards as I do not like other drivers 'bullying' me, I would look for hand gesture (as signal not visible) and if they politely pointed left then I would understand what they want to do and then move forwards for them.