This morning I had a very near miss that could have resulted in a Astra max van hitting me in the side at 40mph. I dropped my daughter at school and was parked in a layby. I indicated to leave the layby and wanted to do a U turn as we do every day. Duly a car coming along behind me stopped, presumably to take my place in the layby, and let me out.
I checked my mirrors, no bikes, no pedestrians, just a line of traffic behind the car that wanted to take my space. I pulled away in a " u" and out of the corner of my eye saw something moving very fast. I nailed the brakes and even though I only just got going, and so wasnt going fast, the car did its full ABS, Brake assist emergency stop thing and stopped my car dead. (brakes done last week, thank goodness). I then was sat stationery at 90 degrees to the line of traffic for a grandstand view of a white astra van, wheels fully locked up, steering not working heading straight for me. Because I'd stopped SO quickly I was out of his way by about 3 inchs. He sailed right in front of me fully locked up.
Unbelievably he had approached the line of traffic queing to let me out and thought that over taking a whole line of traffic without slowing down was a good idea as it would save him a whole 10 seconds.
Had I not had a car capable of stopping as they can I may not be writing this now.
That is the third time ABS brake assist has saved me from an accident. The other two occasions were once on a roundabout when a metro was indicating and driving to an exit and then at the last sec swerved in front of me to stay on the round about! The best ever one was a taxi moving from the inside lane of an empty motorway to the outside lane without any notice or reason, unless the driver had fallen asleep . I did an emergency full ABS Brake assist stop from a very high speed to nearly stationery which left me shaking!
NB. NCAP doesnt allow for things like Brake assist but awards stars for things like a seat belt buzzer. Brake assist has now protected me 3 times from getting into the accident that NCAP measures.
I checked my mirrors, no bikes, no pedestrians, just a line of traffic behind the car that wanted to take my space. I pulled away in a " u" and out of the corner of my eye saw something moving very fast. I nailed the brakes and even though I only just got going, and so wasnt going fast, the car did its full ABS, Brake assist emergency stop thing and stopped my car dead. (brakes done last week, thank goodness). I then was sat stationery at 90 degrees to the line of traffic for a grandstand view of a white astra van, wheels fully locked up, steering not working heading straight for me. Because I'd stopped SO quickly I was out of his way by about 3 inchs. He sailed right in front of me fully locked up.
Unbelievably he had approached the line of traffic queing to let me out and thought that over taking a whole line of traffic without slowing down was a good idea as it would save him a whole 10 seconds.
Had I not had a car capable of stopping as they can I may not be writing this now.
That is the third time ABS brake assist has saved me from an accident. The other two occasions were once on a roundabout when a metro was indicating and driving to an exit and then at the last sec swerved in front of me to stay on the round about! The best ever one was a taxi moving from the inside lane of an empty motorway to the outside lane without any notice or reason, unless the driver had fallen asleep . I did an emergency full ABS Brake assist stop from a very high speed to nearly stationery which left me shaking!
NB. NCAP doesnt allow for things like Brake assist but awards stars for things like a seat belt buzzer. Brake assist has now protected me 3 times from getting into the accident that NCAP measures.
). The highway code bears very little resemblence to real driving, but sadly it's what they use to decide who was wrong.
