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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

You should reflect on the possibility that you might be tailgating.

Oh, I do. Tailgating vs efficiency.

Assuming you don't get in front of the car in front of you, wouldn't the maximum efficiency gain be one car length?

In some jurisdictions tailgating is essential. Most drivers are super aggressive and cut in, making the people behind you angry and you get nowhere.

Unless you stop at 0kph you are not getting nowhere. Keeping enough buffer between cars improves traffic instead as it is abrupt stopping which backpropogates through traffic. If there is enough space for cars to change lanes safely the entire mass can go at a constant speed. That might seem slower but it provides better throughput.

The trouble is that individual drivers optimize for perception, leading to a tragedy of the commons situation.

If you leave as much space as you would like to, other drivers change into your lane to use the space to advance, and now there isn't enough space, so you would have to slow down. You are now traveling slower than the adjacent lane, so more drivers move to the other lane to get around you and fill the space you're trying to leave again, preventing you from resuming parity with the speed other traffic is moving. As long as the space is there they'll continue to do this, which is a massive hazard because you're inducing a speed differential and a large number of lane change maneuvers.

It’s not your responsibility to make people behind you happy.

It is your responsibility to maintain a safe distance between you and other vehicles.

I’d be surprised if traffic regulations in your area don’t talk about minimum safe distances. Not maintaining those to 1) get somewhere faster and 2) avoiding being honked at by some psycho, kinda sounds risky.

The main trouble in my city is certain snarley interchanges in which you’ll never make it to the lane you need for your exit if you aren’t, much of the time, way too close to the car in front of you.

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