An Interesting Incident

Because I had eased off when I first saw the parked car in the distance, in case anything appeared coming the other way. By the time the oncoming car did appear, I judged that it was far enough away and I was close enough to allow me to overtake safely.

He was still stationary when I first moved over to the other lane and started to accelerate.

He was absorbed by the sat-nav when I stopped behind him. I don't know what he was doing with the sat-nav before then.

To my mind the three things he did wrong were:

1. Pulling away when I had clearly started to overtake him.

2. Stopping suddenly after I had pulled back behind him.

3. Not pulling forward again when I was in imminent danger of colliding with him.

It seems to me from the responses so far that the correct action for me would have been to anticipate that the parked car would move off and to wait behind him until the oncoming car had pbutted.

The admirable principle of anticipating the irrational actions of other drivers and acting accordingly can surely only be taken so far. A year or so ago my wife was driving along a country road in North Yorkshire when she approached a turning on the left at which was waiting a 4x4. The driver looked both ways and then drove into the side of our car. There was no problem apportioning blame or in subsequently reclaiming my insurance excess and hire car costs. My wife wondered what she could have done to avoid the accident. To which the answer could only have been to anticipate that the other driver would pull out, in which case she should have slowed to a crawl or even stopped. Perhaps we should always do this when we see vehicles waiting to cross our path!

Peter