Unwanted close shave

tompcp

I had an interesting close shave this morning while happily commuting to work.

I approach a junction to turn right onto a reasonably busy road and check both ways as I approach the turning (blue line) - nothing coming from the right and I see a large white van turning right out of the junction next to mine (yellow line).

Fine I think, I'll just pull up to the junction, stop and wait for Mr Van man to move out the way and then have another look - while this is happening I have a very weird sense of impending doom and slow right down.

Pretty damn lucky I did, as along comes Mr Silver Corsa (red line) and actually goes around the outside of the van that's pulled out and cuts straight across the corner of the road that I'm on - at about 20-30mph.

http://tinyurl.com/2m4okq (Google Maps link)

So he misses my front wheel by inches and carries on at exactly the same speed - I don't think he lifted his foot off the accelerator or even thought about braking.

So this c*** must have thought that rather than just letting the van out and then making his turn using the filter lane - it would be far better to carry on around the outside of it, on the wrong side of the road, all so he could get to work a bit quicker.

I'm pretty aware of what's happening around me but people doing things like this are plain scary - it all happened so quickly that I didn't even have chance to react, let alone shout abuse. It really isn't worth thinking about what would have happened if I hadn't slowed right down or if I was a kid on a bike.

Ok rant over and keep safe.

graeme_s-2

The stupidity of some people never ceases to amaze me.

Google's "my map" tool is pretty handy for illustrating this stuff though isn't it? [:)]

Eat My Dust

Didn't you have another close one at this junction the other day?

SNAPS

rothbook

Great illustration!

tompcp

Yeah Google Maps is pretty useful for illustrating near death!

I've not had any real problems there before - usually just have to wait a bit to turn right.

I suppose the harsh bit is that most of the time you can predict the danger - i.e. you see the car that's about to pull out in front of you or hear the car that's trying to squeeze past.

In this case I had no chance to move out the way - oh well, I'll keep an eye out for him in the future.

Buggi

something similar happened to a guy at work who was killed. he was turning right and was correctly positioned in a filter lane, waiting for a gap in oncoming traffic. line of oncoming traffic was slow moving so some tw@t in a BMW at the back of the line decides to overtake the whole line of traffic, speeds up on the wrong side of the road and takes the guy out.

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