If he'd been driving *that* slowly, whoever was pbutting him on the right shoulder in a spray of gravel and cusswords would've had the accident.
NY to CA 2775I've driven cross country (coast to coast) about a dozen times in as many years. Fast and scenic tend to be in contradiction...
There are things we can't really do much about in the course of reasonable or even unreasonable driving, and one of them is somebody from the oncoming lane making a left turn immediately across you without warning.
In this case, I'm thinking that even if his subconscious was already unwrapping the Gift of Fear because of the strange behavior of the guy in the other lane, *and* he's pretty quick on the draw in general, it took him the better part of a second to perceive a threat, react, and get some braking going. You can figure from speed (unspecified by the original poster) how far he traveled in that time and then how much more distance was needed to actually stop.
I'm thinking that if this occurred with the stated parameters, he did well to leave skidmarks and begin to attempt some form of evasive action, beginning at any speed commonly encountered outside a parking lot.
The left turn is pretty near the bottom of the right-of-way food chain for a reason! (Brits and other lefthand drivers of course take the mirror image of this.) If somebody violates that basic buttumption without warning and at close quarters, the question is not "whether" but how much worse your day is going to get -- a point that presumably will not be lost on either the cops or the original poster's attorney.
--Joe
