There is a saying -- "only the paranoid survive." Your alertness saved not only yourselves but lots of folks around you -- you know, the people texting while driving. (What's up with that? Unbelievable.)
And although the fool who cut you off is a terrible person, the bigger dangers are the fools who do not properly secure their loads, like the guy with the hay. Incompetence is a lot more common than recklessness.
In Southern Calif, the "fallen load" problem has gotten so bad that the traffic announcers sometimes say "Remember it is the first weekend of the month, so lots of folks are moving from one apartment to the other and are dropping furniture everywhere." Early on weekday mornings, the hazard tends to be ladders falling off of pickup trucks.
