Close call

[Lucky Bob]

Travelling north on the M1 this afternoon between J8 & J9

Bloke behind me in an Astra van had been semi tail-gating since J6 and the motorway was really packed, had a few stops and then it happened, the traffic in front of me slowed, and I slowed and looked in the mirror to watch my rear get re-modeled by the Astra, but at the last second he must have looked up, slamed on his brakes and either he turned to the left or his brakes pulled him to the left, which he then over corrected and drove straight into the central barrier head on and missing me.

As all the traffic behind him stopped so my view in my mirror widened and there in the middle lane was some poor bloke on a bike rolling into the near side lane and in the path of a very large lorry which in turn headed into the hard shoulder in an attempt to miss the biker.

All three lanes of the motorway came to a complete stop, it was such a shock that I just kept going ?, and I don't know why or what I should or even could have done.

I keep thinking about the poor bloke on the bike.

I don't want to make light of this but it was just like watching outakes from Smokey and the Bandit & Vanishing Point.

[lee330sport]

Wow, you caused all that:eek: ............................

[lee330sport]

Im only kidding. I see it all the time nowadays, everybody seems to be in a rush and not 100% concentrating on the road.

[Lucky Bob]

Wow, you caused all that:eek: ............................

To be honest, started to think just that, but the more I recall it the bloke in the Astra must have been asleep, drunk or taking something.

[will_uk]

Very lucky for you, but not the biker :( When I was young and foolish I used to be guilty of tailgating a lot of the time.... 13 years of driving and plenty of near misses in the early years put a halt to that. People don't realise actually how far it takes to stop and lets face it an astra van ain't gonna out-brake (is that a word? lol) a Beemer is it?

Another thing I notice on motorways is how twitchy people get on their brakes when they're very close to the car in front. This seems to cause all sorts of traffic slowing behind. If everyone kept a reasonable distance I guess traffic would flow more freely in this country.

Glad to hear you're ok mate.

Will...

[Lucky Bob]

Cheers will,

yes it's the biker thats the real concern.

I've been driving for 33 years ( yes i'm old) and the biggest change in all that time is now your every day run-a-round can reach speeds in excess of 115mph.

When I anchored up my car was straight with a hint of ABS, the Astra just went all over the carrigeway. :eek:

[Two_Stripes]

As a biker as well this sort of thing pisses me off. A mate ended up sliding down the outside lane of the m25 on his back watching his bike sliding after him and slowly gaining on him, all because some guy didn't look to his right when he pulled out. He tapped my mate and sent him flying, the guy then pulled back into middle lane and carried on. My mates saviour was the fact that the car behind stopped in time before running him over and better than that the vehicle 2 cars behind him was an ambulence!

If you saw that this was caused by the van driver it is probably obvious to the police but they may not know why. Give them a ring and say that you saw what happened, hopefully they will be able to pin the whole lot on him.

May sound tough but what if the truck had run the biker over