dont want to apportion blame, so I'm not gonna..

My Uncle used to be a HGV driver, he said one thing to remember when following a lorry

If you can't see their mirrors, they cant see you..

Sounds like it was a case of 50/50 to me. I assume that you were in his blind spot. Blind spots in trucks can be as big as a bus. If you always ride assuming that every other road user was actually blind, you wont go to far wrong

You mean they're not!!! :shock: :shock: :shock:

Oh I could defintiely see his mirrors.
But yeah, if you look at it the way BigApe put it, I assumed a bit too much safety and didn't give myself a good enough escape route.

remember tho - "if you cant see them in their mirrors - they cant see you"

And well done for admitting some responsibility. To me the key word in your original post is 'suddenly'. It's often argued that if you are anticipating all the eventualities (like vehicles finding themselves in the worng lane at a M-way junction) nothing is ever sudden or unexpected but simply something you deal with. Easy to say, hard to achieve consistently. I'm glad you coped with the situation.