It seems an incorrect user experience to me that if the user is sitting on the first view-state and allows the session to time out, when they they submit from that view-state, they are forced to start the flow over again.

Is there any way to allow the first view submission to behave in a way that hides from the user that a new flow is beginning? This is a pretty glaring deficiency in the Web Flow user experience, in my opinion and in the opinion of my team of developers and testers. I guess I'll open a JIRA if I get no replies here as to what I might be missing (either in technically or philosophically).

(Different but related discussion about proactively detecting this situation to inform the user here and on StackOverflow.)