Safe Speed Forums

Here's another serious stuff-up from long ago. This is about 1985.

I'm on a single carriageway, twisty, good quality B road, somewhere around Dorking. I'm driving in a spirited manner at about 60mph.

As I come around a left hand bend (with a hedge on the left limiting my vision) I discover (to my horror) stationary traffic ahead queued for road works traffic lights. The last couple of cars are actually on the bend. I'm going way way too fast to stop and for a split second it's looking like 40mph into the back of the queue.

There's no traffic oncoming and one firm dab of braking turns off the steering (no ABS in those days). I slide in a straight line onto the opposite carriageway, release the brake, and cruise past the waiting traffic jam to meet the road works lights as they are changing to green.

I reckon I was the luckiest bastard on the planet for that few seconds...

We went back and looked at the marks. Two perfect black straight lines leading from the left to the right of the carriageway... I never moved the steering.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

After reading these two posts about old cornering incidents, I can only conclude that your life has recently flashed before your eyes

Did this flatspot the front tyres?

Actually the trigger was this post. Especially the bit that says:

I rate that as dodgy advice (with an important grain of truth).

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Not to any known, noticable or memorable degree.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewforum.php?f=33 was my reason for asking, but in fact my situation was around an order of magnitude harder on the tyre than yours.