Nightmare - driving wrong way on a dual carrigeway
 

I heard about it before but never thought I would encounter it myself.
I was driving on a dual carrigeway near Luton after dropping off my mum off at the airport, in the rain. A van in front of me and a car overtaking the van. The car quickly pulls in after overtaking the van on a rise. What came next is unbelievable, a car comes past the other way in the inside lane doing about 70mph! I barely register this and go to overtake the van too as its sinking in.
The van starts breaking on top of the rise, I am in the inside lane trying to overtake him. Another complete idiot is coming towards us on the inside lane.
I am braking and pulling back in behind the van who has stopped (also an idiot! should have kept moving forward slowly), the abs has already kicked in. I realise I am going to hit the van.
Seeing that the idiot driving the wrong way in the fast lane has slowed down I think I have enough time to go round the van and get back in the outside lane.
I barely miss the van, still breaking with abs working, sail round him and back into the outside lane.
The wrong-way idiot drives past us at around 40mph.

I simply cant believe that two complete morons were driving together the wrong way on a dual carrigeway in the rain in the evening. I hope there were
no accidents further down as there were some cars behind us.
There were cut-throughs to the correct side so perhaps they realised their mistake and went back.

That was very close, if we encountered them a few seconds earlier or later and things could have ended very differently.

I had something similar on the M11, though it was many years ago as the details below will confirm:

Morning rush hour and I was driving out of London up the (relatively new) M11 towards Harlow. Almost no traffic my way (the M11 was that new and I was going out of town) so my Dolomite was moving "briskly"!

Got to the section which is now occupied by the M25 intersection near Hobbs Cross and noticed traffic coming the other way (into town) was all hooting and flashing like mad, so I started to slow down and moved to the inside lane, wondering what was ahead. :Confused:

Then over the hill ahead of me appeared a car driving quite fast towards me in the outside lane, what to him was the left side of a 3-lane carriageway!
This was maybe 4 or 5 miles from the Harlow intersection, so it must have driven all that way. :eek:

The message must have sunk from the noisy flashing cars on the southbound lane because it actually did a U-turn a little way in front of me and stopped on the hard should, pointing the right way.

Wow :eek: Glad you're ok Goran,


We should have those reversed 'Wrong Way' signs like they have in the US.


https://i.imgur.com/VkgCLyo.jpg

https://ak7.picdn.net/shutterstock/v...07/thumb/1.jpg

Definitely.
Tracing back my journey I think it was on the A505. I now see there is a petition to improve this stretch of road due to too many wrong-way incidents.
All I can say to anyone on here please avoid A505 if you can.

Still can't believe two cars were going the wrong way together. I hope it wasn't foolish kids playing some kind of dare game.

https://stevejarvis.mycouncillor.org...s-on-the-a505/

When I saw those "Wrong Way Go Back" signs in Mark's post, I thought that must have been here, as our exit ramp signs are exactly the same!

That second photo might be Australia in that case, considering the (correct) direction of travel and which side the slip-road appears to join the carriageway (assuming you all drive on the same side we do). I just know it's not the UK because we don't have those signs, and the sky here is not usually so blue!

Glad you didn't have an accident there.

Around -97, I lived in Gothenburg while studying at the University. My Lincoln Continental Mk III was stored on a farm further north.
One day I hitchhiked with a man from the Middle East. Going onto the motorway the wrong way!! I started to shout stop! stop!
Luckily he barely got us onto the motorway, before he understood that I was telling him we were going the wrong way, with meeting cars. We then reversed back off the exit ramp.
One of the most scary experiences in a car I ever had.

Thanks! Me too. I was resigned to crash into the back of the van as the safer option but somehow at the last moment my brain decided there was enough time to go round the van and not hit the wrong way car. At that point I kind of felt like a passenger with someone else driving.

I wonder how it was in Sweden when it switched over to driving on the right. I just checked it was back in the 60's, I thought it was more recent for some reason.

It is interesting how the survival instinct kicks in and creates a strange sense of calm that seems to make everything happen in slow motion, seemingly giving you extra time to react. As Pink Floyd describes it in their superb Two Suns in the Sunset track, "you stretch the frozen moments with your fear".

The nearest I've had to your experience was on the M60 in the Irwell Valley many years ago (then part of the M62), often referred to locally as 'death valley' because it is/was a notorious accident black-spot.

I was driving back from Manchester in heavy rain and rush hour traffic, in lane 3, rising out of the valley, overtaking the trucks that were crawling uphill. The visibility was fairly poor, so I was driving quite cautiously when I suddenly noticed that the cars a few hundred yards ahead seemed to be ploughing into an extremely flooded section of motorway. As the cars hit the lake, the spray made it impossible to see anything beyond.

There was no option but to drive through the water myself. It would've been far more dangerous to brake hard than to go through it so I gently backed off the throttle, held the steering firmly straight-ahead and prepared to blindly plough through the lake (travelling at approximately 70mph). My car remained straight and went through the water without a problem. But as the spray cleared, about 100 yards ahead, I saw the car that went through before me was now facing me, slightly sideways on, with its rear end buried in the crash barrier.

My survival instinct kicked in and I somehow calmly reacted to the situation, making a split-second response in what seemed like minutes. There was little time to brake and I knew there was a vehicle in the lane next to me, so I accelerated hard (towards the stationary vehicle ahead!) and managed to get far enough ahead of the vehicle next to me to pull in front of it at the last moment, just feet away from hitting the stationary car. It was one of those moments that made me thankful my car had enough power to get me out of trouble and it's one of the main reasons I choose not to drive under-powered cars today.

I had a wrong way motor was incident probably some 15 years ago now on the M5 late at night in good weather.

I had my alertness raised when I saw a police car coming down the opposite carriageway in the third lane with its lights blazing, then seconds later a car passed me heading towards me in my own third lane. It was late at night and I was in the first lane so plenty of distance but left a lot of what it's unanswered for sure.

They say in these critical moments your brain goes into hyperdrive working faster than ever which is why you can replay everything in such perfect slow motion. You were Uber concentrating but didnt know it. Often people have no audio memories as the brain shuts down hearing to heighten the other senses apparently.

Glad you are ok. Shaken up a bit though no doubt.