by Helen Gyselman

Created on: December 06, 2008

Don't shove. That's what I say at eight o clock in the morning, driving up from Frimley to Farnborough, England. After the roundabouts, which contrary to belief, actually works, there's a two lane road, set at 40mph, which merges into one, right after the traffic lights.

Those traffic lights cause Hell with a capital H.

At eight o clock in the morning, students are driving to college, parents are driving kids to school and adults are driving to work. Throw in the people driving to the shops and you have madness. Then the traffic lights turn red and you're stuck like a numpty, resentfully watching that little bit of space ahead of you get crammed with the cars coming out from the college's road. Then the green light's there and no one can move anyway until the traffic lights six minutes ahead have turned green too because of the intersection up there.

Because of all these grumpy people, the merging becomes a battle of wills. Those in the righthand lane have chosen to be in the lane that has to merge: they have to filter into the left lane. I stick in the left lane unless I have an unattractively large lorry in front of me that rumbles along at the speed of a snail.

When you're in the merge lane, the #1 tool is eye contact.

The #2 tool is a smile and a nod.

The eye contact lets you pass along a pleading message to the driver in the 'steady' lane that you need him to drop back a bit, and then easing in slowly, rather than trying to shove yourself in.

The smile and the nod, is a thank you.

The middle finger for whenever the driver chooses to ignore you, is for lessening your grip on the steering wheel, endangering your stability and simultaneously encouraging any nearby driver to want to ram you and screw his no claims insurance bonus.

Now, how to deal with a merging lorry.

I mentioned earlier about unattractively large lorries. In my old car I learned the one thing the driving instructor never warned me about. They really do have rubbish vision in their wing mirrors!

This is from when the lorry tried to merge into my lane....into the spot where my car was trundling along, and nearly pinning me to the crash barrier. The apologetic smile when he realised was accompanied by a white face. My middle finger stayed perfectly flat to the wheel as I decided to overtake him. How did I escape being made into a pancake in that possibly-near-fatal incident?

The brake.

The brake is the best thing invented in a car. Tap it light enough and you can drop back hard enough that the person behind knows to brake too, and you can still be moving enough to make any other emergency manoeuvres, but can drop back enough out of the vehicle's way to avoid being destroyed.

So summary.

#1: eye contact.

#2: smile and nod = thank you

#3: brake when anything's cutting it too close.

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