In California, if you aren't driving 5 mph over the speed limit, the car behind you is going to tailgate the hell out of you. It's ridiculous, I know.
On the other hand, tailgating is always extremely dangerous, even when the speeds involved are relatively low.
If you tried to for example leave a car's body length distance in most busy cities you would have car after car aggressively cutting in front of you. This is even more dangerous than the original tailgaiting.
In Germany the minimum safety distance is taught in driving classes and severe violations of it will be fined like any other reckless behaviour.
The rule of thumb is "as much of a distance as you pass within two seconds". This scales wonderfully with speed and easily covers the reaction time and breaking duration.
Sure, in urban traffic the typical safety distance is usually less than a vehicle length, but with both tailgating and cutting in on someone constituting reckless driving offences, that's not a huge problem.
You can also be fined for hogging lanes on a motorway, thankfully.
Part of driver's education is being able to adjust your speed to the conditions and safely maintain the recommended speed on the Autobahn when possible. If you are too scared to drive at such speeds or unable to do so safely, you won't pass.
Of course we still have plenty of drivers who are afraid of driving on the Autobahn (often because they don't do it regularly enough once they have the driver's license) and especially the elderly can be in denial about the limits of their actual abilities and make up for their inability to drive safely by driving more slowly (which isn't necessarily any safer).
I'm sorry, but I can't accept that. Police need to start focusing on safety instead of revenue generation. I don't care what some idiot is doing, if you're tailgating them at highway speeds in the lane next to me you're putting us all at risk just so you can get somewhere 3 minutes faster. I don't care if you're upset about the length between the car ahead of you and the one ahead of it. Cutting them off in the lane next to me and nearly causing a reck is insane. We have to stop just accepting that being an asshole is okay and start holding people accountable.
If you are two seconds behind, they could come to a near stop and you can crash into them at full speed.
If you drove with zero distance between the your bumper and the car in front of you, if they brake hard you will have no impact at all.
This is why it's safe for train cars to tailgate.
In my view, autonomous cars will likely one day form trains for higher traffic density and throughput while remaining safe.
autonomous cars can form trains because they can react orders of magnitude faster than a human can to suddenly changing driving conditions.
[0] 1mph/(9.8m/s2) in seconds, according to Google, assuming friction coefficient of 1
Of course, the County wants to reserve a lane for bus use only now...
It's also not too uncommon to cross a non-motorway 70MPH dual carriageway, when walking outside a city.
I don't know if our roads are safer for pedestrians than the USA. They're considerably safer in total, but it seems difficult to compare the US and UK for pedestrians in particular because of the differing laws and distribution of methods of travel. However, they're probably at least in the same ball park, despite our more laissez faire attitude toward pedestrian-road interaction.
The A417 between Cirencester and Cheltenham is a dual carriageway that has pedestrian footpaths across it.
Imagine driving at 70mph toward this:
350 yard warning: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.8078399,-2.0618748,3a,75y,...
actual crossing: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.8051623,-2.0595278,3a,75y,...
350 yards at 70 MPH is, I think, 10 seconds.
I wonder how well the self driving car copes with these.
In fact, I wonder how well the self driving car copes with an overly aggressive driver cutting in front and slamming on their brakes just to piss you off. I guess it would handle that better than my mothers elderly neighbour who recently didn't manage to brake in time and hit the twerp, writing off her vehicle in the process. Of course, it was counted as her fault since she struck the car in front..
You really think Google can't afford a Death Ray in each car?
I guess it depends on officer mood and how long the car was safely in your lane before the breaking. Mostly officer mood.
Still, there are lots of completely legal sudden braking activities that would cause a collision over 10% of the time. People don't actually drive totally defensively all the time.
It's also very rare for slow drivers to get ticketed.
Holding up a line of cars that would otherwise be driving too fast is not going to be the cause of an accident. The cause of the accident would be the driver who was driving too fast!
Seriously, this stuff is to be determined from top down, not from perspective of individual self-interested drivers with zero context, little responsiblity and no interest of ensuring optimum flow.
Also, the general culture of aggression and disregard for law is something that is not healthy for neither society, nor economy.
Yes, it is. So what? Democracy is not a silver bullet. Some problems it solves well, others it can't tackle.
> Sometimes the law from top down is incorrect.
Sometimes it is. And sometimes it isn't. I argue this is a case where top-down approach is the right one.
> The experiences of stakeholders matters.
I think health and life of innocent third parties should matter more.
I'm not suggesting that the non drivers should always get their way though. There are roads where cars are allowed to be driven faster than this, and roads where pedestrians are not permitted.
In other words, that would only work for a traffic system which only moves one way, linearly, and has zero branches. Out there in meatspace, things are...a little bit more complex. Intersections and buses and trucks and pedestrians, oh my.
Also Regensdorf is really pretty busy and all you're doing by going slow is pissing people off. If you want to go that slow, that's what side streets are for.