Is it worth reporting someone who brake checked you?

neilmcl

wazza2004 said:

neilmcl said:

At what speed were you going when you decided to overtake the HGV? Did you actually control the overtaking speed yourself or simply allow your cruise control to do so? Does your dashcam footage show your speed?

Sounds to me that you probably misjudged the closing speed of the other driver before attempting the overtake. No excuse for his behaviour though.

The hgv and I both left the roundabout and joined the dual carriageway and started to accelerate to national speed. As I got closer to hgv I checked the second lane there was no car behind me. 

That didn't answer my question. At what actual speed were you doing when you began your overtake and did you just rely on your CC to complete it rather than manually accelerate?

neilmcl

wazza2004 said:

caprikid1 said:

"Had the cruise control set at 70mph.  "

I suspect you oblivous to the driver behind wanting to progress and were relatively slow to complete the overtake and return to the nearside lane. Given that he managed to overtake you. 

No excuse for brake checking, post up the footage here so we can see.

Would like to post footage but will seek advice from police first. I read somewhere that if I put the footage on social media it might affect the case.

Absolutely no reason why it would.

AdrianC

Before anybody leaps in...

Nobody is excusing the other driver's behaviour.

I agree with the general thought that the OP may have been very lax in his acceleration (probably relying on the cruise's "Resume") and then moving back to L1, frustrating the other driver unnecessarily.

Takes two to tangle.

zagfles

Similar happened to me about 15 years ago (and nothing to do with cruise control, didn't have it then). Guy was total loony, I think I delayed him going 90 for about 5 seconds while overtaking a lorry, I moved over after overtaking and he pulled right in front on me and braked hard, I moved back into lane 3 and he very nearly clipped me as he went in front again, before speeding off at about 90.

My wife phoned 999 and reported it. All credit to the police - a couple of junctions later we passed the a'hole on the hard shoulder with a police car! Was so tempted to give a honk and finger but thought better of it I guess they did the idiot for speeding, the police never got back to us, but we didn't have any dashcam evidence.

zagfles

AdrianC said:

Before anybody leaps in...

Nobody is excusing the other driver's behaviour.

I agree with the general thought that the OP may have been very lax in his acceleration (probably relying on the cruise's "Resume") and then moving back to L1, frustrating the other driver unnecessarily.

Takes two to tangle.

Oh really? Seems a lot of people are implying he was "asking for it".

I use cruise control, set at 70 (and yes, actual 70, before the usual lecture about speedos overreading), and it's never caused a dangerous situation, prob around 100k motorway miles. In fact the only time anything similar happened (as above) was before I had cruise control.
I don't exceed the speed limit to overtake on motoways, and it sometimes takes a while, but very rarely am I even tailgated. Loony drivers do seem a lot rarer these days, in the UK at least. Driving abroad is far worse.

But of course there are always a few impatient morons who think they own the road and speed limits don't apply to them, and everyone else should move out of their way even if they have to pull in and slow down. But they seem to be a dying breed.

AdrianC

zagfles said:

AdrianC said:

Nobody is excusing the other driver's behaviour.

Oh really? Seems a lot of people are implying he was "asking for it".

Can you see the difference between those two?

Roland_Sausage

zagfles said:

I use cruise control, set at 70 (and yes, actual 70, before the usual lecture about speedos overreading), and it's never caused a dangerous situation, prob around 100k motorway miles. In fact the only time anything similar happened (as above) was before I had cruise control.
I don't exceed the speed limit to overtake on motoways, and it sometimes takes a while, but very rarely am I even tailgated.

You are maybe not being tailgated, but you are probably forcing the person you are slowly overtaking to have to slow down, as you trap them behind the HGV that they are rapidly catching up with. They can't pull out as you are hovering over their right shoulder for ages.

This is one of my pet hates and I wrote about it in the other driver rant thread. You should be completing your overtake as quickly as possible, not dragging it out for a mile, even if it just needs a short burst of speed for 10 seconds.

In my car I would accelerate away from you, but in my works van which has a speed limiter set to 70, I would get really annoyed as you spent half a mile trying to overtake me at 70.00001 until I was forced to reduce my speed or go into the back of an HGV.

sheramber

Roland_Sausage said:

jbainbridge said:

Yes .. especially as you have video evidence. See if the local police force has a way of submitting videos online, most do.

Police Scotland won’t do this. I contacted them offering to send them dashcam footage of a dangerous driving incident and they won’t accept it.

They said I would have to make a formal report first, an officer would have to come to my house and take a statement, and only then would they request the dashcam footage if they deemed it necessary.

I didn’t bother pursuing it.

That is not our experience. An  elderly driver was 'persuaded' to give up his licence after Police Scotland were given dash cam footage of his driving. The said of he didn't give it u voluntarily they would pursue it  through the courts.

zagfles

Roland_Sausage said:

zagfles said:

I use cruise control, set at 70 (and yes, actual 70, before the usual lecture about speedos overreading), and it's never caused a dangerous situation, prob around 100k motorway miles. In fact the only time anything similar happened (as above) was before I had cruise control.
I don't exceed the speed limit to overtake on motoways, and it sometimes takes a while, but very rarely am I even tailgated.

You are maybe not being tailgated, but you are probably forcing the person you are slowly overtaking to have to slow down, as you trap them behind the HGV that they are rapidly catching up with. They can't pull out as you are hovering over their right shoulder for ages.

This is one of my pet hates and I wrote about it in the other driver rant thread. You should be completing your overtake as quickly as possible, not dragging it out for a mile, even if it just needs a short burst of speed for 10 seconds.

In my car I would accelerate away from you, but in my works van which has a speed limiter set to 70, I would get really annoyed as you spent half a mile trying to overtake me at 70.00001 until I was forced to reduce my speed or go into the back of an HGV.

No, if I was in the outside lane and someone doing similar speed was indicating out to overtake an HGV, I'd usually ease off and let them out. If more drivers did that you'd get less lane hoggers, because that's one of the causes, people don't want to get stuck behind an HGV for ages so they don't move over when they should.

OTOH if I'm overtaking cars doing 65 or so and someone doing 80 or 90 comes up behind me, I'm neither going to slow down and pull in nor speed up. They can drive at the speed limit for a short time, they're not going to force me to either slow down or exceed the speed limit. And they do. I think if I was driving below the speed limit it would annoy people, but it's very rare these days to get tailgated or even flashed when driving at the speed limit.

People whinge about the state of driving but it's massively improved from a few decades ago when getting tailgated was common, or today in other countries where the driving is far worse.

molerat

Again not excusing the other driver's behaviour but I can't see how they got in front of the HGV and undertook you if you if you were carrying out the overtake correctly.