As an observation test I'll refer you to the previous post answering that question.
The traffic slowed very suddenly as well.
If I hadn't seen the brake lights of both the Clk and the cars in front, immediately they activated, I wouldn't be writing this now.
Please forgive me Dieselman; I can only presume that despite reading your account of the incident a few times, I still may not have interpreted correctly what happened. In response to Troon's comment:
I'm not trying to claim superiority or suggest that DM's driving was anything other than exemplary here, but there are always ways to improve one's driving to become less susceptible to traffic variations.
you wrote
No offense taken, I had moved closer to the CLK to give a greater stopping distance for the lorry if it should be necessary.
Am I right to understand from that that you saw the cars braking heavily in front of you, but because you (like all good drivers) regularly check your rearview mirrors and had seen the lorry bearing down on you, you delayed your braking to give the lorry a greater distance in which to stop? If so, I would offer the suggestion that you didn't allow for the lorry driver being as observant as we all should be and perhaps only reacting to YOUR brake lights. Therefore, by leaving it later to brake you may have inadvertantly left the lorry driver with LESS time to react and bring his lorry to a halt within the available distance. But I could be wrong there and perhaps your account of the incident omitted the fact that you started braking heavily as soon as you saw the vehicles in front of the CLK braking, but upon seeing the lorry approaching your back at an unnerving speed, you released your brakes enough to slow your rate of decelleration, whilst keeping your brake lights on.
But I still can't even fully condone the second assumption I made there. Surely, if you had left sufficient space between yourself and the CLK in relation to the conditions (wet road, heavy traffic, motorway slip road), there would have been no need to brake heavily enough to invoke the ABS. If the CLK had had a 50 ton block of concrete dropped on it from above then, yes, it would have stopped too suddenly to have been able to brake normally behind it. But that wasn't the case. I still can't help thinking that all the vehicles, including yours, were too close to each other in that instance.
If you can't admit to driving too close to the vehicle in front, then I worry for you. I admire and applaud your ability to take action to prevent what could have been a very serious accident. But I fear that action may not have been necessary if you had been driving with everyone's safety more in mind.
Please take a moment to think carefully about what Troon said:
I drive nearly 25k miles a year, often on motorways, and have never triggered my ABS due to an emergency stop.
... there are always ways to improve one's driving to become less susceptible to traffic variations.
The real skill isn't about escaping an accident through exemplary actions, it's about avoiding being in those situations in the first place.
