The thinking at the time was that, without the capsule attached, the tower might not fly as planned. It could be unstable in the thin up atmosphere. It might spin. That lateral thrust, withough the mass of the capsule, might cause it to spiral, leaving it floating out in front of the accelerating rocket.
This became a factor during the (unmanned) Mercury-Restone 1 incident, where the launch tower flew off when the rocket was still on the launchpad, leaving the capsule behind on the rocket because the capsule was only designed to detach when the rocket was in freefall (it wasn't in freefall, because it was still on the launchpad.)
The acceleration of the launch abort system on its own, when it's not dragging the entire capsule with it, is double digit gees. The main rocket is not going to catch up to it and run into it.