(Spare me the low effort comment about how everyone should be prepared for the car in front of them to stop instantly because it hit something, statistically nobody drives like that)
Edit: I misinterpreted the OP about it being an four car pileup.
For better or worse neither your fantasy of how people ought to act nor the letter of the law is reflective of how the overwhelming majority of the human population operators motor vehicles or expects others to. Is it ideal? Probably not. But it's a decent balance between being somewhat prepared for the expected traffic oddities, leaving margin for some subset of the unexpected and efficient use of road space.
I'm sure this will be an unpopular comment because there is no shortage of people here who think humans adhere to laws the way a network switch adheres to its configuration but the reality is that there is not perfect alignment between how reasonable traffic participants behave and the letter of the law.
You're basically arguing that almost everyone else is unreasonable. That's going to be a very uphill argument.
Also there's no reason to hide behind "I think that some of us would argue". You clearly hold this opinion. Ask yourself why you have reservations about owning it.
>People who do not maintain sufficient stopping distance
Who defines "sufficient" because the consensus based on the observed behavior of typical traffic seems to be that "sufficient" is a few seconds where possible but always less than whatever the comments section on the internet thinks it should be
>American driving experience
The American driving experience is not particularly remarkable compared (except maybe in its low cost) compared to other developed nations. All of which are pretty tame compared to developing nations
I'm not asking you to like the way people drive. I'm just asking you to not assess traffic incidents based on the reality of how people drive and not the farcical assumption that most participants are following or can be expected to be following whatever rules are on paper.
If the other driver decides to randomly brake in the middle of the road (as some Teslas have been known to do), it's not necessarily the person behind's fault.
This is infantile circular logic. It makes for great internet feel good points an little else.
What the other car was doing absolutely matters. Plenty of people have brake checked their way into an accident and wound up paying for it because there were witnesses.
>It is always the driver's responsibility to maintain enough distance that they can safely respond to any action taken by the vehicle ahead
Citation please. I'm particularly interested in one that backs up the word that you thought was important enough to italicize.
My state places no specific requirement for following distance upon drivers. The state driver's manual states a suggested minimum of two seconds.
I spot checked two other states and their drivers' manuals advise similar (one advised three seconds, one advised a variable number depending on speed), neither said anything about being able to account for anything the car in front of you does.