If I slam on my brakes for no reason in the middle of a highway, and I get rear-ended, you would argue it's 100% the fault of the guy behind me? Ridiculous.
People slam on the breaks for any number of reasons, both valid and invalid.
Failure to leave enough space to stop is 100% your fault.
You were supposed to learn this in driving school.
No, but it is a reason that is illegal, which is the point. If you brake check someone (and they have a dashcam to prove it), you'll be paying the fines and the repairs.
Change the situation: car on the other lane swerves and hits the car in front of you. so now there's a stationary hunk of metal suddenly infront of you, which you collide with.
Is it the chunk of metal's fault for being stationary on a highway or your fault for following too close?
Legally yes, you want to be damn sure you leave plenty room in front of you, regardless of how people cut in, because if you rear end someone it will most likely be considered your fault, regardless of the circumstances, especially if you don't have a dash cam. This goes doubly if you're driving a heavy vehicle with a longer stopping distance.
But there are plenty of cases where it can certainly be the fault (morally, and legally if you can prove it) of the person who gets rear ended - intentionally "brake checking", insurance fraud "boxing", changing lanes from a stopped lane into a moving lane, or changing lanes with insufficient room behind you and then braking hard (as we seem to have here).
I read the transcript of the driver interviews. The Tesla driver (or FSD, whatever) both changed lanes and braked. The officer who interviewed hime cited him under the California code for improper stopping. I suspect that it had a lot to do with the lane change occurring simultaneously with the braking.
that is the law in the United States, as well.
following distance is controllable only by the following car. failure to maintain adequate following distance then rear ending the car you are following, no matter what reason they stopped, is always the fault of the following car, and never the followed car.
stopping for no reason on a busy interstate is an offence, but it will cause zero crashes if people are following at safe distances.
the number of people who have forgotten what they probably didn't learn to begin with in Driver's Ed is really scaring me right now.
> that is the law in the United States, as well.
No, this is incorrect.
First of all, vehicle code is different for each state so there's no "law in the United States" as a whole.
For California, this is the section which makes brake checking illegal:
https://california.public.law/codes/ca_veh_code_section_2210...