>Also I'm wondering what kind of situations there are where you "need to accelerate to get out of a tight spot?" I'm a pretty experienced driver and I think the

>Also I'm wondering what kind of situations there are where you "need to accelerate to get out of a tight spot?" I'm a pretty experienced driver and I think the number of "must accelerate" situations I've ever encountered could be counted on a hand. Almost universally, you can solve whatever problem you're in by being more patient and decelerating instead. There are a myriad of situations, often involving merges of some sort, where the moves of various traffic participants have resulted in a situation where an aggressive acceleration up to speed and into traffic or up to the traffic speed of another lane so you can get into it, closer to the car in front of you to make space behind you for someone else, or something else like that results in a better overall situation and a net fewer number of people needing to react to the situation and therefore less opportunities for someone to do it wrong causing a near miss or accident. Yes, you could likely solve these situations by braking but in doing so you are roping more traffic participants into the situation and making it more dangerous making accelerating and merging the more courteous approach. Braking for everything is definitely more stupid proof heuristic and if followed blindly will yield infinity better results than accelerating for everything but it leaves a heck of a lot of efficiency on the table.