Originally Posted by
Colnago Mixte
It's pretty rare that a car does something so suddenly that I need to lock up my brakes.
I agree. In this case though this happened so suddenly. In most of the right hooks I've experienced the car is slightly ahead of me and I can see it slow and I know what's going to happen. In this instance she never got into my forward field of view until she was already in the turn across our path...she literally just whipped a high speed veer and almost cut into us, and even went slightly off the road in the process. We were partially into the turn area - which due to the off-ramp nature of the turn was quite long. As soon as I became aware of the car in my peripheral vision she was turning in front of us - or at least that's what I remember feeling.
Originally Posted by
Colnago Mixte
If I ever need to lock up my brakes in response to something a car does, it's tantamount to a serious misjudgment on my part of the situation as it unfolded, or just generally not paying attention. It takes a car a pretty long time to maneuver most of the time, at least at relatively low speeds.
My guess is she whipped her turn in front of us at about 40-45mph, and had probably approached us from behind at 55-60 mph (the normal speed for the road we were on). If that turn has been a 90 degree turn it couldn't have unfolded at the speed that it did.
I do think there was misjudgement on our part in that we didn't adequately recognize the situation where someone could overtake us and turn in front of us at that speed, because I don't think we realized the nature of the turnoff until we were almost in it. The driver made a serious aggressive error, and we didn't see the potential for it.