> Leaving space in fronto of you and trying to keep a constant speed also reduces this effect

I would like to see some sources on that claim. Or some reasoning.

The thing is I live in one of the cities with the longest commute distances and I’ve spent a lot of time in stop and go traffic thinking about this exact thing. I used to think as you do. I would focus on a truck in the traffic far ahead of me and try to use it to maintain a constant speed at the average of the highway speed. in my experience it creates this laggy elastic effect that probably doesn’t help.

Recently I heard that you should try to maintain an equal distance between the car in front of you and the one behind you, and I think this actually works better (obviously this is my anecdotal experience)

Of course safety comes first always