MGF wrote:GJD wrote:...How would you adapt that test for the case of a vehicle incapable of travelling as fast as the priority vehicle, or limited by law to a slower speed?
I would expect the driver to wait for a suitable gap in the traffic taking into account the speed of his own vehicle in relation to the priority traffic.
Perhaps DB's test could be adapted for the case I suggested thusly: the test could become whether you are travelling in the same direction and speed as the priority vehicle, or the maximum speed the vehicle is capable of/permitted to do if that is slower than the priority vehicle, before you then engage on some manoeuvre which requires him to slow. To be honest though, I can't now remember what was in my mind at half past midnight when I posed that question...
But if DB's test (with or without some modification for slow vehicles) is the definition of being established, then the OP is never established. The OP would probably never even be established by that definition if the major road was NSL and the turnings were staggered by two or three hundred yards. He's not going to accelerate all the way up to 60 in that short distance.
I think there's another concept that has to have some relevance, which is reaching the point where, by virtue of your position and speed, you are now indistinguishable from someone who had been travelling along the priority road intending to make the same manoeuvre (the right turn in this case).
While you are crossing the Give Way line and not yet aligned with the priority road, you clearly haven't reached that point yet. While you are accelerating up to whatever speed you're going to attain before slowing for the right turn (not much if the stagger is only a couple of car lengths), you haven't reached that point yet. But once you are slowing for the right turn at the same position and speed as someone would be if they had approached along the priority road to make the same right turn, then you have reached that point. If someone then comes up behind you and has to slow, have you broken the Give Way law?
