Dual carriageways and motorways are the safest and fastest types of road, and are really
useful when driving long distances.
The most common way to enter a dual carriageway is from a slip road, as this allows the joining
traffic to accelerate up to speed before merging in with the traffic flow.
This can be a challenge for a new driver, as good observation and judgement skills will
be needed to stay safe.
This video will show how we use a 3-step process to join dual carriageways safely, even when
the traffic is very busy.
Let’s take another look at the introduction clip and see how the 3-step process works.
We should use the slip road to accelerate our car up to a similar speed to the traffic
flow, as this will make it much easier to merge into a gap later.
The actual speed we get up to will depend on how long the slip road is - the more space
there is to merge in, the faster we should go.
But on shorter slip roads we should stay slower, in case we need to stop.
We should check over our right shoulder as early as possible to see where the approaching
traffic is - as it will not be visible in our mirrors yet.
We need to judge the position and speed of other vehicles so we can decide where we will
merge into the traffic flow.
Once we have decided where we will merge we indicate to the right to make our car more
visible, and if needed adjust our speed.
We should remember that the traffic on the mail road has the priority, so we shouldn’t
do anything that forces other drivers to react.
Sometimes others may change position or speed to help us, but we shouldn’t rely on this
happening.
We use the full slip road to merge in, cancel our indicator and change up to 5th gear.
Once on this longer slip road we use plenty of engine power and accelerate the car up
to 4th gear and at least 50mph.
Once up to speed we look for the end of the grass strip on the right, as this is usually
the best time to look over our right shoulder.
We see that there is plenty of space behind the white van, so we maintain our current
speed to allow him to pass us.
We keep an eye on our mirrors, and as we can see no danger we gently merge into the dual
carriageway and continue driving.
We join the same slip road as before and accelerate the car up to speed again.
We always stay in the left lane, unless we are overtaking slower traffic.
We check for traffic, and see the lorry behind us.
We can’t force him to move, so we brake gently to reduce our speed and let him pass.
We are intending to merge into the gap behind the lorry, but as it passes us we see that
it has changed lanes - so we can merge in as it passes us.
We should allow the lorry to complete it’s overtake, as if we speed up and stay alongside
its trailer we could be in danger.
This slip road is much shorter and has a single lane - this will make it harder to merge into
the traffic flow, so we keep our speed much slower in case we need to stop.
As we steer left we look to our right and check for traffic.
We can see that there is enough space, so we accelerate up to speed promptly and merge
into the dual carriageway.
We join the short slip road again, and stay in 2nd gear as this will give good acceleration
once we have spotted a safe gap.
This time we check for traffic and see there is no safe gap, so we slow right down.
Then we spot the lorry moving over for us, so we accelerate the car quickly.
We keep monitoring our mirrors in case anything changes, and finally merge into the main road.
If the traffic is very heavy we may even need to stop and wait for a safe gap.
so, remember to: Assess how long the slip road is
Accelerate the car up to the correct speed Check over our shoulder for traffic
Merge smoothly into the traffic flow
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