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If you rear-end a vehicle that's established in your lane, it's always your own fault, no exceptions. It's your job to follow at a safe stopping distance. The o

If you rear-end a vehicle that's established in your lane, it's always your own fault, no exceptions. It's your job to follow at a safe stopping distance. The other cars can be blamed for disputing traffic, sure, but you as a driver are responsible for always following at a safe distance and assuming every other car could slam on their brakes at any time.

ProAm 9y ago
Are you saying brake checking a tailgater is not illegal? It is the persons fault for not rear ending a vehicle, its also the first drivers responsibility to drive responsibly (i.e. not braking or stopping for things that are imaginary)
- PacifyFish 9y ago
  Similar to how being an asshole and flipping someone off while driving is not illegal, or how being an asshole and tailgating someone is not illegal, brake checking a tailgater certainly makes you an asshole, but it is not illegal. Social responsibility be damned.
  - ProAm 9y ago
    It is illegal in many states under 'aggressive driving' or 'road rage'.
    - Retric 9y ago
      Feel free to feel smug whole dying in a ditch by the side of a road. Or you know maintain a reasonable following distance so sudden stops are a non issue... Really, when it's ego vs several tons at highway speeds it's not ego that wins. Further, 'I thought I saw something' is a blanket exception for sudden breaking.
      - ProAm 9y ago
        Im just saying self driving cars should be required to drive within a reasonable expectation of a normal, safe, predicable manner. If they are not there yet, maybe they shouldn't be on the roads yet.
        Retric 9y ago
        They are. If this was about sudden evasive manovers and lane changes then sure, but simply breaking more frequently is a non issue because again any car can break at any time and you need to deal with such reasonable and normal behavior.
        ProAm 9y ago
        Based on the number of comments from people that live in these town I do not believe this is simply more frequent braking. It sounds like it happen a lot and unnecessarily, which adds risk and frustration to humans also using the road.
        Retric 9y ago
        People are more likely to notice and remember self driving cars, so you can't assume they are accurately reporting frequency vs. just remember more frequently and or a biased sample.
      - Dylan16807 9y ago
        ...someone brake checking is the one running on ego. And they're the one likely to get hit despite being "technically correct".
        sjwright 9y ago
        If someone is dangerously tailgating me, I will very lightly brake-check them (barely slowing down) because the vast majority of tailgaters seem to be mediocre drivers who aren't thinking deeply about their actions. If they persist, I'll slow down and let them overtake. When I'm driving, I'm constantly scanning for bad (i.e. unsafe or unpredictable) drivers in all directions. Once spotted, the choice is either to be well past them or well behind them. Usually the choice is easy.
- urda 9y ago
  > It is the persons fault for not rear ending a vehicle, its also the first drivers responsibility to drive responsibly (i.e. not braking or stopping for things that are imaginary) Pitch this line to your insurance company if you ever end up causing a rear ending. It'll be entertaining for the rest of us at least. Doesn't matter what the car in front of you is up to or not. If you do not leave enough space to be able to handle them stopping, you are at fault. You should be utilizing defensive driving, and not depending on the driver in front of you ever acting responsibly or rationally.
  - ProAm 9y ago
    You will be liable but the first driver has a responsibility to drive responsibly. Stopping for no reason and causing an accident should be considered aggressive driving and in many states is illegal.
    - Eric_WVGG 9y ago
      He didn't cause an accident, though. If you crashed into him, you were too close and caused the collision. It's not about intent, it's about behavior.
    - jschwartzi 9y ago
      How do you propose I tell the difference between something I imagine seeing and something that is really there? In both cases there's an observable phenomenon, and it is only though collision with the imagined object that I can tell the difference. If I think I see a child in the road I'm sure as hell not going to stop and wonder if I'm just imagining it before I brake.
    - urda 9y ago
      Your insurance carrier will not care what the other driver should have been doing, if you rear end someone you are at FAULT as you failed to keep a safe distance from the car in front of you. It doesn't matter if they slow or stop for any reason ahead of you, if you run into them it's your fault. > "For purposes of insurance and policing, the driver of the car that rear-ends the other car is almost always considered to be at fault due to not leaving enough stopping distance or lack of attention." [1] I'm glad we have drivers on the road that hope for the best in other drivers, but you need to sink this in your head today: You should treat everyone on the road as an accident waiting to happen, and should practice defensive driving at all times in response. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rear-end_collision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rear-end_collision
- aetherson 9y ago
  I've been rear-ended a couple of times. In all cases, I talked to their insurance and said, "They had the responsibility to maintain a safe driving distance, it doesn't matter what I did, they can't rear end me," and that has been an argument that has always completely worked: they've always taken full responsibility for the accident. (To be clear, I wasn't intentionally provoking anything: in one case I hit my brakes because the car in front of me panic-stopped, in another I was in a right-turn-yield-into-another lane situation and I checked my blindspot and found that there was a car who had right-of-way, so I hit my brakes to keep from encroaching on them.)
  - monk_e_boy 9y ago
    My car got rear ended in the snow. It was parked outside my house and I was in bed at the time. It was a good couple of months before they took responsibility for the accident.
  - posterboy 9y ago
    i believe "right-turn-yield-into-another lane" is forbidden in man places for this reason, although I might have misunderstood you.
    - aetherson 9y ago
      I think you probably did. I was making a right turn at a controlled intersection. Specifically, the dedicated right turn lane was controlled by a yield sign. I had slowed and was preparing to merge into the other lane, checked my blind spot over my shoulder, and found that there was a car in my blind spot, so I braked to let it pass me (since the yield sign gave it right of way). The car behind me failed to react to my breaking and rear-ended me.
- koenigdavidmj 9y ago
  I might need to slam on the brakes at any moment because a child or deer or something ran onto the road. You always have the obligation to maintain a safe stopping distance. No exceptions.
- mulmen 9y ago
  Stopping for something imaginary and brake-checking a tailgater are not the same thing. Another person's irresponsibility does not justify your own. Your responsibility does not change based on your value judgement of another person's actions.
- TheCoelacanth 9y ago
  Braking with the intention to cause an accident is illegal in some places. I can't find any law making it illegal to suddenly brake because you mistakenly believe that it is necessary to do so.
js2 9y ago
> every other car could slam on their brakes at any time Or veer out of the way of an obstacle you can't see, leaving you to either similarly veer or collide with it. IOW, do not assume you only need to account for your own reaction time; rather assume the vehicle in front of you can instantly stop moving and you must account for both your reaction time and your vehicle's stopping distance.
- jessriedel 9y ago
  Your safety advice is completely unreasonable to follow on highways. When you give that sorta advice, you make safety worse not better. It takes about a 100 yards -- a full football field -- for a normal passenger car to react and come to a complete stop. https://www.qld.gov.au/transport/safety/road-safety/driving-safely/stopping-distances/graph https://www.qld.gov.au/transport/safety/road-safety/driving-... This is equivalent to 4 full seconds of following distance, which is double the typical 2-second-rule recommended by transportation governing bodies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-second_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-second_rule If your suggestion was taken seriously, it would literally halve the carrying capacity of our highways. Luckily, situations where the vehicle in front of you comes to an instantaneous stop are extraordinarily rare, basically requiring a head-on collision.
  - sjwright 9y ago
    I disagree. On a congested road, If you can't see two cars ahead of you and react to the actions of that second car, you're not driving safely. On a non-congested road, there's no excuse for putting sufficient distance between you and the car in front.
    - jessriedel 9y ago
      Your recommendation on non-congested roads is vague and I don't think your recommendation for congested roads conflicts with my critique of js2. Certainly, it's often impossible to see 200 yards ahead on various stretches of the highway, so any reasonable driver will be violating js2's advice if they follow yours.
ams6110 9y ago
A well known insurance scam is changing lanes immediately in front of another car then coming to a sudden stop, forcing a rear end collision. It's hard to prove unless you have a dash cam and even then you might be found at fault if the other party is convincing enough to the officer who investigates the accident.
- username223 9y ago
  > A well known insurance scam is changing lanes immediately in front of another car then coming to a sudden stop, forcing a rear end collision. It's an even more brilliant way to defend barely-working robot cars. Program them to err toward the letter of the law rather than road safety, then blame other drivers when they slam on their brakes because they mistake plastic bags for pedestrians.
jhayward 9y ago
> If you rear-end a vehicle that's established in your lane, it's always your own fault, no exceptions. Of course there are exceptions. There are any number of well-established circumstances that, if proven, place responsibility on the driver in front. It is not legal to suddenly panic-brake to a stop, for instance, without exigent circumstances which make it necessary to do so. If a driver causes a collision by doing so they bear liability. There are any number of insurance scams that are thwarted by such exceptions.
- TheCoelacanth 9y ago
  Citation? I haven't been able to find any instance where this is true except where the driver was found to have braked suddenly with the intent to cause an accident, which would clearly not have been the case with a self-driving car.

ProAm 9y ago

Are you saying brake checking a tailgater is not illegal? It is the persons fault for not rear ending a vehicle, its also the first drivers responsibility to drive responsibly (i.e. not braking or stopping for things that are imaginary)

PacifyFish 9y ago
Similar to how being an asshole and flipping someone off while driving is not illegal, or how being an asshole and tailgating someone is not illegal, brake checking a tailgater certainly makes you an asshole, but it is not illegal. Social responsibility be damned.
- ProAm 9y ago
  It is illegal in many states under 'aggressive driving' or 'road rage'.
  - Retric 9y ago
    Feel free to feel smug whole dying in a ditch by the side of a road. Or you know maintain a reasonable following distance so sudden stops are a non issue... Really, when it's ego vs several tons at highway speeds it's not ego that wins. Further, 'I thought I saw something' is a blanket exception for sudden breaking.
    - ProAm 9y ago
      Im just saying self driving cars should be required to drive within a reasonable expectation of a normal, safe, predicable manner. If they are not there yet, maybe they shouldn't be on the roads yet.
      - Retric 9y ago
        They are. If this was about sudden evasive manovers and lane changes then sure, but simply breaking more frequently is a non issue because again any car can break at any time and you need to deal with such reasonable and normal behavior.
        ProAm 9y ago
        Based on the number of comments from people that live in these town I do not believe this is simply more frequent braking. It sounds like it happen a lot and unnecessarily, which adds risk and frustration to humans also using the road.
        Retric 9y ago
        People are more likely to notice and remember self driving cars, so you can't assume they are accurately reporting frequency vs. just remember more frequently and or a biased sample.
    - Dylan16807 9y ago
      ...someone brake checking is the one running on ego. And they're the one likely to get hit despite being "technically correct".
      - sjwright 9y ago
        If someone is dangerously tailgating me, I will very lightly brake-check them (barely slowing down) because the vast majority of tailgaters seem to be mediocre drivers who aren't thinking deeply about their actions. If they persist, I'll slow down and let them overtake. When I'm driving, I'm constantly scanning for bad (i.e. unsafe or unpredictable) drivers in all directions. Once spotted, the choice is either to be well past them or well behind them. Usually the choice is easy.
urda 9y ago
> It is the persons fault for not rear ending a vehicle, its also the first drivers responsibility to drive responsibly (i.e. not braking or stopping for things that are imaginary) Pitch this line to your insurance company if you ever end up causing a rear ending. It'll be entertaining for the rest of us at least. Doesn't matter what the car in front of you is up to or not. If you do not leave enough space to be able to handle them stopping, you are at fault. You should be utilizing defensive driving, and not depending on the driver in front of you ever acting responsibly or rationally.
- ProAm 9y ago
  You will be liable but the first driver has a responsibility to drive responsibly. Stopping for no reason and causing an accident should be considered aggressive driving and in many states is illegal.
  - Eric_WVGG 9y ago
    He didn't cause an accident, though. If you crashed into him, you were too close and caused the collision. It's not about intent, it's about behavior.
  - jschwartzi 9y ago
    How do you propose I tell the difference between something I imagine seeing and something that is really there? In both cases there's an observable phenomenon, and it is only though collision with the imagined object that I can tell the difference. If I think I see a child in the road I'm sure as hell not going to stop and wonder if I'm just imagining it before I brake.
  - urda 9y ago
    Your insurance carrier will not care what the other driver should have been doing, if you rear end someone you are at FAULT as you failed to keep a safe distance from the car in front of you. It doesn't matter if they slow or stop for any reason ahead of you, if you run into them it's your fault. > "For purposes of insurance and policing, the driver of the car that rear-ends the other car is almost always considered to be at fault due to not leaving enough stopping distance or lack of attention." [1] I'm glad we have drivers on the road that hope for the best in other drivers, but you need to sink this in your head today: You should treat everyone on the road as an accident waiting to happen, and should practice defensive driving at all times in response. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rear-end_collision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rear-end_collision
aetherson 9y ago
I've been rear-ended a couple of times. In all cases, I talked to their insurance and said, "They had the responsibility to maintain a safe driving distance, it doesn't matter what I did, they can't rear end me," and that has been an argument that has always completely worked: they've always taken full responsibility for the accident. (To be clear, I wasn't intentionally provoking anything: in one case I hit my brakes because the car in front of me panic-stopped, in another I was in a right-turn-yield-into-another lane situation and I checked my blindspot and found that there was a car who had right-of-way, so I hit my brakes to keep from encroaching on them.)
- monk_e_boy 9y ago
  My car got rear ended in the snow. It was parked outside my house and I was in bed at the time. It was a good couple of months before they took responsibility for the accident.
- posterboy 9y ago
  i believe "right-turn-yield-into-another lane" is forbidden in man places for this reason, although I might have misunderstood you.
  - aetherson 9y ago
    I think you probably did. I was making a right turn at a controlled intersection. Specifically, the dedicated right turn lane was controlled by a yield sign. I had slowed and was preparing to merge into the other lane, checked my blind spot over my shoulder, and found that there was a car in my blind spot, so I braked to let it pass me (since the yield sign gave it right of way). The car behind me failed to react to my breaking and rear-ended me.
koenigdavidmj 9y ago
I might need to slam on the brakes at any moment because a child or deer or something ran onto the road. You always have the obligation to maintain a safe stopping distance. No exceptions.
mulmen 9y ago
Stopping for something imaginary and brake-checking a tailgater are not the same thing. Another person's irresponsibility does not justify your own. Your responsibility does not change based on your value judgement of another person's actions.
TheCoelacanth 9y ago
Braking with the intention to cause an accident is illegal in some places. I can't find any law making it illegal to suddenly brake because you mistakenly believe that it is necessary to do so.

js2 9y ago

> every other car could slam on their brakes at any time Or veer out of the way of an obstacle you can't see, leaving you to either similarly veer or collide with it. IOW, do not assume you only need to account for your own reaction time; rather assume the vehicle in front of you can instantly stop moving and you must account for both your reaction time and your vehicle's stopping distance.

jessriedel 9y ago
Your safety advice is completely unreasonable to follow on highways. When you give that sorta advice, you make safety worse not better. It takes about a 100 yards -- a full football field -- for a normal passenger car to react and come to a complete stop. https://www.qld.gov.au/transport/safety/road-safety/driving-safely/stopping-distances/graph https://www.qld.gov.au/transport/safety/road-safety/driving-... This is equivalent to 4 full seconds of following distance, which is double the typical 2-second-rule recommended by transportation governing bodies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-second_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-second_rule If your suggestion was taken seriously, it would literally halve the carrying capacity of our highways. Luckily, situations where the vehicle in front of you comes to an instantaneous stop are extraordinarily rare, basically requiring a head-on collision.
- sjwright 9y ago
  I disagree. On a congested road, If you can't see two cars ahead of you and react to the actions of that second car, you're not driving safely. On a non-congested road, there's no excuse for putting sufficient distance between you and the car in front.
  - jessriedel 9y ago
    Your recommendation on non-congested roads is vague and I don't think your recommendation for congested roads conflicts with my critique of js2. Certainly, it's often impossible to see 200 yards ahead on various stretches of the highway, so any reasonable driver will be violating js2's advice if they follow yours.

ams6110 9y ago

A well known insurance scam is changing lanes immediately in front of another car then coming to a sudden stop, forcing a rear end collision. It's hard to prove unless you have a dash cam and even then you might be found at fault if the other party is convincing enough to the officer who investigates the accident.

username223 9y ago
> A well known insurance scam is changing lanes immediately in front of another car then coming to a sudden stop, forcing a rear end collision. It's an even more brilliant way to defend barely-working robot cars. Program them to err toward the letter of the law rather than road safety, then blame other drivers when they slam on their brakes because they mistake plastic bags for pedestrians.

jhayward 9y ago

> If you rear-end a vehicle that's established in your lane, it's always your own fault, no exceptions. Of course there are exceptions. There are any number of well-established circumstances that, if proven, place responsibility on the driver in front. It is not legal to suddenly panic-brake to a stop, for instance, without exigent circumstances which make it necessary to do so. If a driver causes a collision by doing so they bear liability. There are any number of insurance scams that are thwarted by such exceptions.

TheCoelacanth 9y ago
Citation? I haven't been able to find any instance where this is true except where the driver was found to have braked suddenly with the intent to cause an accident, which would clearly not have been the case with a self-driving car.