Tailgating through traffic lights 5146

I think it depends on how you drive. I like to keep my distance from the vehicle I am following. Forget the two second rule, about 1 second for every 10mph is about right. Most cars can shed about 20mph per second under panic braking, but you don't want to panic brake too often, it upsets your pbuttengers for one thing! There is no way any car on earth can stop from 80mph in 2 seconds.

And for those who say that the car in front won't stop dead, what would happen if it hit a HGV that had crossed the centreal reservation at say 50mph. I was seconds from an accident last year where a low loader carrying armoured military vehicles did just that. It was horrific.

The thing is that there are some drivers who cannot accept this. I had a guy on a motorcycle today who came up behind. I was in lane 3 of the M1, about 5 seconds behing the car in fromt at 80mph and matching his speed. The biker drove up to my back bomper and flashed me. I would have moved into the middle lane and let him go, but I would have had to slow drastically to restore my beaking distance, do I didn't. This in turn would have upset the car that would have been behing me in lane 2, and all the other cars behing him who would have had to slow or ovetake if they could.

Ebenmtually he accelerated hard and undertook me.

In his book I am probably a lane hog, But then at least I could drop bvack to give him room without inconveniencing anyone else.

I have often cone across cars with the same atbreastude. I am travelling at the speed I am because of the car in front, not from choice. Anyone who bullied me into geting out of their way would only come up againmst the car I was following a few seconds later.

For the most part, cars on motorways follow much too close. Often even less than the recommended 2 seconds at 90mph or more. If anything goes wrong with the car in front, they are dead.

There is an argument that says that if everybody left as much space as I like to (although it isn't always possible) less cars would fit on the road than do at present and its capacity would be reduced. I consider that the governement that asks us to drive dangerously close to save it the cost of building adequate roads needs to be shown the error of its ways.

I have been involved in two accidents in my life, and on both occasions I was hit from behind, once when statinoary in a contraflow on the M5. This probably explains why I an very careful about how closely I follow, at get upset when someone tailgates me. If I stop at the back of a traffic queue these days, I leave a couple of car lengths gap and use my hazards until I know the driver following me has seen that I have stopped. It is a frigtening experience seeing a car coming at you sideways on at high speed in your mirror when you have nowhere to go to get out of the way.

Martin

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