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Comment by victorhooi | Hacker News Reader

I'll be honest - I don't respect people who tailgate or follow too closely. I think they're selfish and self-conceited.

People who think - I"m more important than you, I don't care if I kill you, as long as you don't inconvenience you.

The law (and insurance companies) are pretty clear on this (at least in Australia) - if you rear end somebody, it's nearly always your fault, for being silly enough and not leaving enough gap.

They have educational campaigns on leaving enough gap (it's meant to be 3 seconds). Things happen, and people have to emergency stop.

It's taught to every driver.

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The problem is that a 3 second gap is large enough for someone else to put their car there, so that's what happens.

And no matter how many times you build that 3 second gap, someone will keep taking the space. What ends up happening is that your 3 second gap means people will try to go around you (if this is the freeway) and then get right in front of you and eliminate your 3 second gap.

I think eventually you'll get into a steady state solution where you'll be limited to 20mph on a 65mph freeway because that's all the room you'll be given - if you follow the rule of law exactly.

Instead, most bay area drivers keep about 40-70ft between cars when going 70mph. Juuuust enough to react in time to an emergency stop. It's a little silly but it's the only way you won't get cut off constantly. Only other way to not get cut off is to go quite slow and be behind traffic speeds.

My car has adaptive cruise control. It automatically paces the car ahead with about a 2-second gap. It is absolutely wonderful for reducing stress and workload in heavy traffic. But the other cars... Someone will see the gap and race around me to fill it, as if I wasn't driving exactly the same speed as the car ahead. Causing my car to slow a bit to rebuild the gap. The next car back sees that and decides the first car passed because I'm an obstacle, and copies them. And so on. Until I'm driving 5mph slower than traffic, with a constant stream flowing around me.

That is not the steady state. When a car gets in front of you and eliminates your three second gap, it does so so it can continue at the speed of the traffic ahead. For you to be limited to 20 mph, the other cars would have to get in front and slow down. I feel that in practice I never have to do more than take your foot off the gas once in a while.

So, your experience in Australia, applies to a city that has a population of 870,000 residents, and a total daytime population of over 2,000,000 all in a 46 square mile area, also with nearly every single intersection controlled in some fashion - no joke, pretty much every intersection has a stop sign or signal lights.

So based on this you give us your throw-away "3 second gap" comment, helpfully telling us that this is the law and something something emergency stop etc drive safe?

With an average speed of less than 10mph, and a very dense city, your normal traffic "rules" don't apply here. Don't even pretend you can understand how things are here without experiencing them.

Your post essentially means "it's okay to hit people sometimes; our city wouldn't work otherwise".

> Your post essentially means "it's okay to hit people sometimes; our city wouldn't work otherwise".

This is trivially true! Otherwise cars would not be allowed on public roads.

When it comes to cars, it's always about tradeoffs and acceptable risk.

>When it comes to literally EVERYTHING civilization does, it's always about tradeoffs and acceptable risk, regardless if whether you personally can identify those trades and risks.

FTFY

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