Tailgating causes a great number of accidents today, no autonomous cars needed.

While tailgating is tiny slice of fatal collisions -- something like 2% -- it accounts for like 1/3 of non-fatal collisions.

We're already basically at Peak Tailgating Collisions, without self-driving cars, and I'd happily put a tenner on rear-end collisions going down with self-driving cars because, even if they stop suddenly more often, at least they don't tailgate.

And it's entirely self-inflicted! You can just not tailgate; it's not even like tailgating let's you go faster, it just lets you go the exact same speed 200 feet down the road.