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Comment by randerson | Hacker News Reader

I often find myself behind a truck that is kicking up stones or belching fumes or has a poorly secured load that looks like it could fly off. Doesn't matter if it is going the speed limit, I want to get past it.

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If this really was your problem you'd lower your speed for a few seconds, gain a safe 500 meters between you and the truck, and finally arrive at your destination about a minute later than you would if you were just in front of it.

I actually do this often. But in general if I put 500 meters in front of me, I'll have a series of impatient cars overtaking me from behind to fill the gap. So there is still (often dangerous) overtaking happening, thanks to the behavior of other road users in general. And when people overtake, if their speed is restricted to the speed limit they'll be facing oncoming traffic for longer than necessary.

How close do you find yourself to the truck in front of you?

Safe follow distances are, At 65MPH, I'm assuming you're in the US, is approximately 300 feet. I'd be kind of shocked that you're getting stones hitting you and detectable fumes 300 feet away.

My Adaptive Cruise Control has 4 distance settings and I use the 3rd, further than most people's following distance, and I've had stones kicked up by truck tires that hit my windscreen from that distance.

I do the same in my Subaru, even at the furthest, the safe distance is choose is no where near the 300feet(approximately 20 car lengths). It's closer to 8 car lengths.

Was curious so I just looked up my car's ACC numbers. Setting 3 is 1.8 seconds and setting 4 (the max) is 2.3 seconds, so about 220 feet at 65mph. As another poster said its pointless to be this far back because everyone else just overtakes you to fill the gap, so you're always braking and accelerating and averaging a smaller distance than in setting 3.

Clearly you’ve never driven in the EU. The usual follow distance here is about three meters, the “safe” one is five, any farther and you’re going to get a stream of cars overtaking you just to fill that void :)

Regarding stones and lose cargo, they would hit you even 300m away as they bounce and quickly lose speed while you’re still flying into at them at 130km/h.

To be honest, I have driven in the EU, but really only on a technically. I rented a car when I visited a Spanish island and really only drove a hundred or two km.

That said, I'm not talking about what people do, I'm talking about what is considered safe.

If it can't be practiced it doesn't matter what would theoretically be safe.

Don't generalise the whole EU when you know it's obviously wrong.

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