Its not entirely peoples fault. There is a delay between when you see space ahead of you and when your car accelerates. You also have to wait for the car in fro

Its not entirely peoples fault. There is a delay between when you see space ahead of you and when your car accelerates. You also have to wait for the car in front to move far enough away for you to have a safety gap. To avoid this issue, everyone has to accelerate at the same time, but since you can't know if/when/how fast the person in front will accelerate, you can't possibly plan this without putting yourself at a huge risk of crashing in to the back of them. There are plenty of traffic simulations that show this same effect happening even with simulated, non distracted, rule following drivers.