Near collision on Mepsil Rd - who would be at fault?

JaMarcusHustle

I know these pop up a lot, and I always find them interesting enough to read. Had a near collision this morning on Mepsil Road, just wondering if I was in the wrong or the other driver? I *think* I was in the clear, but I don't claim to be a perfect driver (once you've driven on the M50 at night with no lights on, you lose that privilege....)

For those not familiar with the area - in the top picture below, I was dropping my girlfriend up to the bus stop marked point A on the map. I do this regularly (coming from the right hand side of the picture, up from South Lotts road), but there's no left turn at the Mepsil Road/Leeson Street junction so I always turn left onto Sussex Terrace and drop her there. That way, I can just swing around and turn right back onto Mepsil Rd towards South Lotts.

So that's what I'm doing in the bottom picture. Hard to see with the angle of the buildings, but at the junction of Mepsil Rd/Leeson St - you can straight on (buildings obscuring this road) or right over the bridge - no left turn as I said earlier. The lights were red, and traffic going straight was backed up past the yellow box. I'm silver Car A, looking to turn right. Black Car B is continuing straight, so is leaving the yellow box free for me to turn right. While I'm turning right, Blue Car C, who will be turning right over the bridge, nips out from behind 2/3 cars who are queued behind the yellow box to join the shorter queue for right turning traffic. So we nearly had a collision in the yellow box.

There's not 2 lanes on that road before the yellow box, the only marking that indicates you can split into a second lane to turn right is after the yellow box. I've never seen cars turning right backed up to the yellow box anyway, so not sure what the normal procedure is for this junction (it's only ever the proceeding straight cars that get backed up. Either that, or those turning right are waiting until they get past the yellow box to split). Am I right in saying that the other driver should not have overtaken the cars queued behind the yellow box, until he got past it? I should note that when I looked right before proceeding to exit Sussex Terrace, I could see him behind either 2 or 3 cars, but could not see his right indicator (I could only see the left hand side of his car, but he wasn't indicating anyway).

corktina

No idea but the yellow car has hit the red one

djimi

Car C is already on the main road. Im no expert but Id hazard a guess that had you had a coming together than it would have looked a lot like the car pulling out from a side road collided with a car on the main road.

Nino Brown

I agree, I think you would probably get the blame OP, its up to you to make sure its safe to enter that road. Those yellow boxes are always dodgy, I hate turning in them for exactly this reason.

I don't see a continuous white line, so the other guy was entitled to overtake the stopped traffic.

JaMarcusHustle

Boy am I glad I adopted a "who was in the wrong?" attitude rather than "look at this gobshíte I encountered today did...."