If you’re only two lengths away from the car in front of you while driving at highway speeds, you are tailgating. Back off. It’s far more dangerous than speeding.
At 65mph, you cover two car lengths (~30 ft) in about 1/3 of a second.
Typically human reaction time for braking is about 1.5 seconds.
If something went seriously wrong in front of you (like a sideways car, or a hidden obstacle in front of the car in front of you) you would have covered 10 car lengths before your foot touches the brake pedal.
Help me out with this, because it’s driving me crazy. Whenever I leave anywhere close to 2 seconds between me and the car on front of me, someone cuts in, and I’m now too close to them, so I slow down, leaving a 2 second gap, and another cuts in. Rinse, repeat. I end up being the slow ass that everyone keeps zooming around unless I tailgate.
Just… Don’t care? Let people in and adjust the distance with them. Driving is an involved process, get a car with adaptive cruise control if you want one that will do exactly that for you.
I guess it’s more than just “caring” - I feel that we’d all be a lot safer if we were all going the same speed instead of inviting people to dodge in and out
It just be that way. Idiots will see your safe following distance as their opportunity to switch lanes. Just keep being the safe one.
Beyond “don’t care” - you get to be the traffic hacker who improves traffic for everyone. yayyy
Credit for above I think: Traffic Waves
Anyone who wants to test how this can work?
Check this old-school site: