Who is right in this situation?

leex

* A main road (N17 in Galway) with a hard shoulder.
* Articulated truck stopped on road to turn right onto a smaller road.
* I need to exit this same smaller road and onto the main road in opp. direction to which truck came from.
* Truck has to let me out onto the main road so that he can take the turn.
* Main road is not wide enough for traffic behind to pass without them driving onto hard shoulder.
* I drive onto main road and stay close enough to white line as I was prepared for people to either rightly/wrongly "undertake" truck.
* A "person" in a ford escort decides to pass truck on inside and me also and starts waving his hands/arms in anger when he hadn't enough power in his car to pass me on inside.

Who was right/wrong? I think I was right but would appreciate honest answers.

wet-paint

I'll hazard an answer. He's right. He's allowed drive on the hard shoulder to undertake a vehicle that's turning right. You have to make sure the path is clear before coming out onto the main road. If your man in the escort was coming, your way wasn't clear.

Blitzkrieger

You could argue that he should have been sure his way was clear before passing.

Mr. Presentable

All traffic on the "greater" road (N17 in this case) has priority over traffic attempting to enter it.

leex

Thanks for the replies. I have since had a look at the rules of the road book.

- It seems the hard shoulder is only for breakdowns, emergency vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians. One can temporarily pull in to let a faster vehicle safely ovetake.
- Traffic leaving main road turning right has right of way over traffic exiting this road.
- Traffic coming out of side road (me) shouldn't pull out until main road is clear which I would have always understood.

However the above is the ideal situation. Am I correct in understanding that the below should be the case in the situation I described:

* Truck is blocking all traffic behind him - no passing on inside should occur???
* He wants to turn right - I am blocking his exit so he has to let me out onto the clear road in front of him??
* He then takes his right turn and traffic behind him progresses.
* Right hand drive vehicle driver would have very bad view of hard shoulder when trying to pass on inside?

(For what it's worth this was almost a crossroads - there was a left turn a few yards up from the right turn).

Anan1

leex wrote:

Thanks for the replies.

I thought the hard shoulder is now only for breakdowns and emergency vehicles?

Traffic on the main road has priority, even if it's on the wrong side of the main road.

Páid

You are totally in the wrong. You have to yield to traffic coming in both directions on the main road. It is perfectly legal to undertake traffic ahead of you that is turning right.

leex

Thanks Páid and Anan for your replies. General consensus is that I was wrong and I accept that. I think the person passing on inside may be wrong also.

Two comments:

Anan - "...even if it's on the wrong side of the main road".

You are referring to overtaking traffic here which is entitled to cross a dotted white line to overtake. Fully aware they have right of way. That is different to traffic that possibly was illegally on hard shoulder. They crossed an entrance to a house and a left turn in their manouever also which is probably irrelevant anyway to my situation.

Páid - "It is perfectly legal to undertake traffic ahead of you that is turning right".

Possibly the case if we're talking about 2 cars - car turning right indicates and moves upto white line to allow other cars to pass on inside. The road is wide enough for 2 cars to do this but is not wide enough for a car and an artic truck.

Gregor Samsa

* Truck is blocking all traffic behind him - no passing on inside should occur???

If you have another look through the Rules of the Road (Overtaking section), you'll see that overtaking on the left is allowed when

You want to go straight ahead when the driver in front of you has moved out and signaled that they intend to turn right.

So the Escort was entitled to overtake on the left in this situation. As he was on the "major" road, he also had right of way.

As for the rules about the hard shoulder, the Rules Of The Road uses typically vague language such as "normally only for pedestrians and cyclists." And then lists one exception (letting vehicles pass), but doesn't say that this is exhaustive, and doesn't list any specific restrictions (as it does for Motorway Hard Shoulders, which are marked differently).

Remember, the ROTR is not the law itself, but an interpretation of the various road traffic laws for general guidance, and is not exhaustive.

leex

Thanks phutyle. I had a look at the UK rules of the road also and they're as vague. Wording is very similar to Irish version - Irish probably copied from it.

You want to go straight ahead when the driver in front of you has moved out and signaled that they intend to turn right.

"Moved out" is the key words here - there was no where for the truck to "Move out" to. I think the question here is can you overtake on the hard shoulder?

Thanks for all the replies. I accept that there may be some wrong in my action. I have been in the position of the Escort driver in the past as I'm sure all of you have been. I wondered what the correct/legal course of action is here. I'm still not convinced one can cross the hard shoulder for this reason.

seamus

leex wrote:

"Moved out" is the key words here - there was no where for the truck to "Move out" to. I think the question here is can you overtake on the hard shoulder?

There was a big discussion on this before on one of the boards and the general consensus about driving on the hard shoulder was that the status was unknown. There's nothing very specific written down.

In any case, the general rule to yield will always apply. Even if you're hit by a speeding driver who has crossed a white line to overtake the vehicles on the major road, and you were coming out from a minor road, you are still technically at fault because you failed to yield.

peasant

leex wrote:

Who was right/wrong? I think I was right but would appreciate honest answers.

Forget about right or wrong for a minute ...

Fact is, you found yourself in a pretty bad spot.
The truck that can't turn is blocking your vision ..you can't be sure if there are other cars passing it on the hard shoulder or not, but you have to assume they do.

You can't sit and wait for things to clear up, you have to move.

You further know, that as soon as you move out of the way, the truck will move and all the traffic that was behind it will be up your arse.

To my mind you did the only thing you *could* do ...move out, into the driving lane (to avoid possible traffic on the hard shoulder) and give it some welly (to avoid some over eager acceleration freak from hitting you from behind once the truck has dissapeared)

So you ended up out-accelarating the Escort on the hard shoulder ...

So what?

Do you think he would have been happier if you had pulled onto the hard shoulder right in front of him so that he could "overtake" you correctly?

Wouldn't think so ..

peasant

one more thing ....

seamus wrote:

In any case, the general rule to yield will always apply. Even if you're hit by a speeding driver who has crossed a white line to overtake the vehicles on the major road, and you were coming out from a minor road, you are still technically at fault because you failed to yield.

The general rule to "yield" also applies to the truck, turning off the main road.
If said truck was turning into a road wide enough to accomodate both truck and waiting car, you would have to wait until it had finished its turn.

In this situation you can't ...so you're already breaking the rules by moving at all.

If you were yielding properly you would have to sit and wait until the truck magically disappears (or failing that, until everybody that was held up by you got out of their cars and beat you up )

EDIT

I think the only legally correct way out of this situation is either for the truck to abandon its right turn or for the waiting car to make a left instead of a right and turn back at the next possible location further up the road. (the latter also being the safest option)

Mr. Presentable

peasant wrote:

the waiting car to make a left instead of a right and turn back at the next possible location further up the road. (the latter also being the safest option)

This is what I hope I'd have chosen. Key word here being "hope"

peasant

nipplenuts wrote:

This is what I hope I'd have chosen. Key word here being "hope"

Driving what i currently drive (i.e. non-accelerating mobile road blocks )
I myself hope that in that situation I would have come up with that solution (if possible in a shorter time than it took me from behind the keyboard)



Weeeell ..there's always hope ...

Anan1

I'd have to agree with the above.

cyclopath2001

wet-paint wrote:

I'll hazard an answer. He's right. He's allowed drive on the hard shoulder to undertake a vehicle that's turning right.

Driving on the hard shoulder is unlawful. It is not a lane, it's not part of the roadway. Vehicles must be driven on the roadway.

smemon

last week i was in the exact same position only there were 2 lanes, one for turning right(which the articulated truck was in) and one for traffic going straight on..

guy pulls out from the side road and i ended up slamming on the breaks and narrowly avoided a collision as the guy pulled out not anticipating traffic behind the truck...

the only reason i didn't hit him, is because i could see his wheels moving underneath the body of the truck, so i just about had time to react..

had i been looking straight ahead/focusing on the road, i'd have hit the guy side on at around 100km/hr :cool:

Esel

leex wrote:

* I need to exit this same smaller road and onto the main road in opp. direction to which truck came from.

This is misleading, as it says you needed to turn left!

leex

This is misleading, as it says you needed to turn left!

Sorry if I wasn't clear. Truck was coming from my left and I wanted to go right.

Anyway I spoke to a cop friend since and he said the traffic behind truck was allowed to overtake the truck on the inside even if crossing hard shoulder. They're not allowed to do this on a motorway.

Sounds like the correct "action" would have been to take a left and then turn around again?!?!

leex

Same situation this morning. Truck waiting to turn right onto the minor road I was exiting. Long line of traffic was passing truck on inside.

Truck driver made a sign and kept blowing for me to pull out in front of him. This time I refused as there was traffic flowing on his inside.

Truck driver decides to attempt the right turn but can't take turn and has to back out onto main road to straighten up to take the turn. (I couldn't reverse as there was vehicles behind me)

One cannot win!

deman

Catch 22.

It's time the local council widened that part of the road for traffic turning right off the main road.

leex

Hasn't a hope of being widened I'd say. There is a house on both sides of it.