Ouch. That is terrible design.
Yeah, every bit as bad as it sounds, and I'm not sure if a delay would have solved anything other than delaying the crime-against-the-player for a few seconds.
Aside for the fact that characters in that circumstance just SHOULD NOT move unless told so, it's also weird that their typical ability to avoid "dangerous surfaces" automatically would constantly prove to be so unreliable (same when around traps etc. Sometime they sidestep them, sometimes it feels they rush on them ON PURPOSE, for some reason).
On a side note, I was having this shower thought that is somewhat amusing how most of the "gameplay improvement" this Early Access introduced so far in its entire first year or so consisted essentially in reverting a lot of very questionable Larian homebrew stuff (advantage for high ground, backstab advantage obtained just walking slowly around people, etc) or implementing missing D&D features.
