Nearly bought it today.

[Pete.]

Had a very close call this morning about 11am. I got onto the A2 at Pepper Hill, started climbing up the hill towards the Swanscombe Cutting, just passed the Ebbsfleet on-slip.

Road is four lanes, 1st lane turns into a slip road for Bean/Bluewater about a mile ahead so a lot of people get out into lane 2 early on. I had made my way into the outside lane on my bike and got to about 70mph. 3rd lane is moving at 50-60mph, which is two cars slowly overhauling a lorry in lane two, one near the 5th wheel, the other near the rear axles. First two lanes are quite densely packed with at least one vehicle moving slowly up the hill.

I didn't see the catylist of what kicked it off but as I pass the car level with the rear of the lorry in lane 2, the lorry braked, indicated and turned all in one movement into lane 3. Front car in lane 3 brakes hard and move to the extreme right of his lane, trying not to come over on me because and I am closing fast from his heavy braking. I get right over to the extreme right of my lane, hope to hell this car leaves me room because there's no way out but past him.

Lorry keeps coming, front car gets fully into outside lane and puts me in the small gap between white line and barrier, until my momentum carries me past and I get back into outside lane.

Car at rear of lorry is not so lucky, there's another vehicle in the outside lane behind me, so he gets his bumper ripped off and wheel arch chewed up by the lorry wheels.

Lorry driver initially keeps on truckin', until I and the guy he didn't hit convince him to pull over about half a mile down the road. All got on the hard shoulder and I left my details with the poor fella with the mangled car as a witness. Lorry driver is pretty unrepentant, claiming he had no choice but to push us over because another car pushed him out. I didn't see any of that so I couldn't comment.

All in all, a very lucky day for me.
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a.k.a 'Geri'

132.9mph off and walked away. Gear is good, gear is good, gear is very very good

[fatpies]

No paint pic?
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"It's easy to attack and destroy an act of creation. It's a lot more difficult to perform one"

[J4mes]

Please go back in time and buy 6 GoPros.

[goto10]

[-Matt-]

Sounds a close call, scary stuff

The amount of huge-ass lorrys i see tail gating on the motorway never fails to amaze me, you'd think weighing 100000 tons they'd leave a little extra gap in case mr-unpredictable trys to cut in or brake hard...

[gavbriggs]

Car push a lorry? Doubt that, a blast on the horn from the truck would have pushed the car back!

He was reading a map or his route/drop sheets!

He's a twat, shoot him!

[-Matt-]

[gavbriggs]

He was a twat, did he get shot too?

[-Matt-]

I'm going to say yes on that one, with a shade of doubt but also some chance of accuracy.

[gavbriggs]

One thing that really gets my back up is so called professional drivers acting like knobs.

Taxi drivers, bus drivers, lorry drivers all act like complete dicks most of the time and if you stand up to them they look the other way as if you don't exist.

Not that I'm perfect but I do try hard to get things correct most of the time.

[Pete.]

Oblig-o-paint sketch. I give it 2/10 personally, you really had to be there....
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a.k.a 'Geri'

132.9mph off and walked away. Gear is good, gear is good, gear is very very good

[-Matt-]

At least bus and lorry drivers get proper trade specific tests.

Half the taxi drivers are free lance lunatics on a normal barely scraped license round here

So from the picture it would appear something came rocketing up the 'slow lane' and decided for no reason to cut in RIGHT in front of him.

His excuse sounds a bit dubious...

[Shaft]

[-Matt-]

Will avoid venturing near there anytime soon

[iooi]

[Kris]

Glad you got away with it Pete - that A2 is definately an exciting road to travel on eh?

Once had a woman swerve off for the Sidcup sliproad from lane 3 all across 3 lanes, right across my path. She was doing her mascara at the time - she had her little boy in the back seat too.
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NSR125RR - ZXR750H1 - ZX9R E1 - GSF600S - GSF600SK3 - VFR400-NC30 - SV1000N - ST1100-R - CBR900RR-R - GSF1200SK5 - GSF600SK1 - VFR1200FA - GSXR1000K2 - ZZR1400 D8F
www.prisonplanet.com

[Jim Mc]

I've had two very close calls recently as well.

One the van ahead of me wasn't paying attention to a queue of stationary traffic ahead. My view was blocked by him. Totally out braked me and left me skidding down the road before I decided I wasn't going to stop and ended up filtering at speed.

The next time was road works on the exit of a roundabout and no warning signs leading up to warn you. A minibus was in the wrong lane ahead of me blocking my view of the road works on approach. Then at the last second a bus pulled out on me and cut me up on the roundabout itself completely obscuring my view of the exit. As i emerged past the bus they had completely closed the right lane. Almost ploughed straight into the big blue arrow sign and ended up having to slalom through traffic cones.

[scubamarkt]

Scary shit, glad you not deaded
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CBT passed March 2013, Mod1 passed May 2013, Mod 2 passed May 2013, Honda CBF 125 sold, Suzuki XF 650 Freewind

[BTTD]

My old man never gave me much riding advice, but one thing he did tell me was to always give yourself a way out. Between cars, onto the pavement, through roadworks, just have somewhere to go.

[Wafer_Thin_Ham]

[Howling TerrorOutOfOffice]

Nicely survived Pete. I bet you put up a decent plume of dust too.
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Diabolical homemade music Bandcamp and Soundcloud
Singer songwriter, Artist and allround good bloke Listen to Andrew Susan Johnston here
The Harry Turner Project

[MattJ]

From the paint diagram I'm assuming the lorry was a 44ton one. In which if the driver did exactly as he said then he is a fucking retard. A car changing it's path into a lorry is going to do fuck all to the lorry. My girlfriends dad is a lorry driver and has had a car change lanes into him and he barely noticed it happened, just felt the lorry wobble a little bit.

So if the lorry driver really swerved into another lane putting many lives at risk just because one fool was gonna nudge his side then he should have his license taken off him. The worst thing that could have happened is the offending car may have lost control but most likely all that would have happened is they had a few scratches. In fact whatever his reason there cannot have been a need to do what he did, he shouldn't be driving.

[darkhorizon]

Hope you had a beer tonight
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2009 CBF600 - London hack - stolen then recovered - still going!
2006 CG125 - Was SORN'd, now back on road - sold Nov '16