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> He said the car in front of him almost hit the car so they swerved barely missing him and then there was the Tesla right there. This is not a criticism of th

> He said the car in front of him almost hit the car so they swerved barely missing him and then there was the Tesla right there. This is not a criticism of the driver, because everyone does it, but one of my pet peeves is hardly anyone follows at a safe distance. Most of the time you can’t even if you want to because someone will merge in front of you with that much space.

Iolaum 5y ago
So true!
dahfizz 5y ago
> Most of the time you can’t even if you want to because someone will merge in front of you with that much space. This annoys me so much. It creates a game theory situation where everybody has to drive like an asshole in order to avoid being cut off by assholes.
- mattcwilson 5y ago
  Seems like the game theory being applied there is a bit of prisoners dilemma. Is playing “asshole” the right move?
  - pclmulqdq 5y ago
    In California, unfortunately, the answer seems to be "yes." When I moved to the northeast US, drivers were more sane on highways.
    - tfigment 5y ago
      When I moved to Boston, the first lesson I learned was any gap in front of me that can fit a car will soon have one there. I think it is big cities in general not just regions.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        It is not big cities per se, it is any road that has surpassed carrying capacity. Obviously, this will be seen more in areas more densely populated with cars relative to road capacity. If you drive in south or east Asia, you will see what naturally happens when the number of vehicles on the path greatly exceed the capacity of the path traveling at a certain speed. You can basically model it as fluid dynamics at a certain point in places like Mumbai and Bangkok.
- fouc 5y ago
  Frankly it's fine to create enough gap that people are passing in front of you.. My response is usually to widen the gap even more. It actually has the effect of helping to smooth traffic, reducing traffic jams.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    > It actually has the effect of helping to smooth traffic, reducing traffic jams. I hear this a lot from people who practice this sort of driving, but don't the simulations suggest that the opposite is true, traffic actually improves when drivers are more aggressive?
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Having cars be "aggressive" in this context basically means they flow into the voids more readily. An example would be moving left into a "this would be an impolite move in any other context" sized cap between two cars to in order to let someone merge and then getting right back out of the lane.
    - fouc 5y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    You are also reducing throughput, and causing more congestion behind you. There is no having our cake and eating it too. Once a road hits maximum capacity at the safest distance gaps between cars, the only way to increase the road capacity is to reduce the distance gaps between cars.
    - fouc 5y ago
      In addition to increasing the gap, you have to drive steadily, with no braking. This makes you become the most predictable car on the road, people behind you can follow steadily instead of constantly accelerating & braking. This leads to reduced congestion. This CGP video covers some of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE
- chronofar 5y ago
  Until you realize being cut off doesn’t actually impact you much so you play a much safer game of giving everyone a wide enough berth to act like an idiot and not ruin your day. Driving habits are extremely psychologically interesting, from road rage at a stranger who did something you didn’t like to people feeling compelled, and indeed proud, of unsafe driving habits that put multiple lives at risk to save a couple minutes on a trip. An argument could be made that curing these tendencies would stand to save more lives then almost any other mass behavioral correction (saving maybe dietary choices).
  - Semaphor 5y ago
    > Until you realize being cut off doesn’t actually impact you much I keep a long distance, and I drive fast. Germany, so fast means actually fast. My large safety margin means I have to keep braking because slower cars move past me and into my safety margin. Then, once the original blockage in front of me is cleared, I have to pass all those slower idiots who just overtook me again. If driving wasn’t such a rare occurrence (usually 3-4 times a year) for me, I’d probably stop keeping a large safety distance like every other asshole. Granted, race car drivers who think distance is measured in centimeters are even worse.
  - Firaxus 5y ago
    Absolutely. In the context of high way driving especially with its high speeds, the slight slowing down to maintain follow distance even if people were constantly moving in is negligible to the overall trip time, and it’s highway driving where that follow distance is the most critical to saving lives. If people sat down with the numbers and realized how little that slight slowing down in the moment someone moves in front of them impacts their trip time, how little it matters to the original trip time that someone passed them, the roads would be a lot safer, less stressful, and faster overall.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      If everyone slowed down, there would be far more congestion backing up due to reducing the throughput of the road. I would argue that the people driving at distances closer to the car in front of them are reducing congestion by increasing the throughput of the road. Obviously this is mitigated by decreased throughput due to increased probability of collisions. But if EVERYONE drove such that they could fully stop if the car in front do them fully stopped, you would have a public uproar over how much backed up traffic there was. There road is basically constantly in flux and politicians could enforce minimum driving distances very easily with cameras and drive down collisions, but it would be massively unpopular and they would get voted out immediately. I presume that is why we already do not have speed cameras in the US. It would be trivial to fine everyone breaking the speed limits. Or even driving too close to each other. For a tolled road, you can get go back however many years you want and retroactively fine people for going past the speed limit based on toll time stamps. But I figure the lack of this happening means the public wants to make this risk vs convenience trade off.
- croon 5y ago
Aeolun 5y ago
You can count lines at the side of the road? I’ve never found it particularly hard to silently count to two. If someone merges in front we just slow down a bit and repeat the excercise.
- Xelbair 5y ago
  It's not the counting that's hard. it's that others will merge in front of you constantly.
  - rileymat2 5y ago
    Also as you adjust to increase the gap in front of you, the person behind starts tailgating, if they were not already.
    - projektfu 5y ago
      In my experience, tailgaters are never satisfied by the speed of the car in front of them. The only good play is to leave enough space in front to stop without getting rear-ended. In Atlanta, people will tailgate in spite of a wide open lane to the left and the driver in front going the speed of the road. I’m not going to tailgate the person in front of me just because the person behind me is tailgating.
      - Verdex 5y ago
        Yeah, tailgating the person in front of me because the person behind me is tailgating has always felt like a: "well, now I have two problems" kind of situation.
      - tremon 5y ago
        If someone is tailgating me, I purposefully slow down, to 10-15% below the speed limit. If someone is determined to crash into my car, I prefer them to do so at as low a speed as I can get.
  - cameronh90 5y ago
wongarsu 5y ago
Everyone does it because the law isn't enforced, and because nobody is following the law enforcing it is seen as unreasonable. On the spectrum between charging people for involuntary manslaughter for cases like this and saying "there's nothing they could have done" we are very far on the latter part of the spectrum.
- jhoechtl 5y ago
  My car and that of my wife warn audibly, if the distance to the car in front is below a configurable distance. I have to actively ignore that wanring.
  - FireBeyond 5y ago
    Same here. And it will display a constant icon on both the console and my HUD if I have insufficient stopping distance.
  - sudden_dystopia 5y ago
  - Miner49er 5y ago
    I saw someone was downvoted for calling you an asshole. I guess that doesn't really follow the spirit of HN, but it's crazy to me how much we have normalized driving dangerously as a society. We have seemingly decided it's perfectly fine to drive in a way that puts others at risk of death or serious injury. It's to the point that if you call someone out on it, like the other commenter did, you're the one in the wrong. Yet they were just calling out a person for putting other people's lives at risk. We should be condemning driving like this, just like we condemn many other activities that put other's lives at risk.
    - ensignavenger 5y ago
      There is some ambiguity in jhoechtl's comment. It isn't clear if they are saying they choose to routinely ignore the warning, or if they are saying that they would have to ignore the warning in order to routinely follow too closely and end up in a situation like was being discussed. One of the site guidelines is to interpret a comment in the best possible way, so I am choosing to interpret it as the latter.
cheschire 5y ago
I once took a defensive driving class, and the teacher's primary point throughout the whole thing is the only area of your car you have control over is the area in front of you. You obviously can't control whether people are beside you or not. You can't stop the person behind you from tailgating. All you can really do is ensure you have adequate space in front of you to respond to events.
- eddieroger 5y ago
  My driver's ed teacher said a similar thing about right of way - you never /have/ right of way, you are given it. I try to drive defensively, but it's a challenge when others are able to choose not to in ways that affect my driving.
  - ndsipa_pomu 5y ago
    That should be "priority". Right of way is about laws allowing walkers to cross private lands etc.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  You don't have complete control of what's behind/beside you but you have some control. Maintaining situational awareness of these areas and adjusting your behavior to coax other traffic to behave in a way that is best/easiest/safest/whatever-ist for everyone is a prerequisite to being a "good" driver IMO.
  - lamontcg 5y ago
    Unless it is just heavy traffic, I constantly tweak my speed and following distance to avoid driving in other driver's blind spots and ideally not be driving beside them.
SkyBelow 5y ago
>This is not a criticism of the driver, because everyone does it, It is a valid criticism of the driver and not everyone does it. It is a major problem that so many people treat safe following distances as great places to cut someone off to save .05 seconds on their commute while risking the lives of others.

Iolaum 5y ago

So true!

dahfizz 5y ago

> Most of the time you can’t even if you want to because someone will merge in front of you with that much space. This annoys me so much. It creates a game theory situation where everybody has to drive like an asshole in order to avoid being cut off by assholes.

mattcwilson 5y ago
Seems like the game theory being applied there is a bit of prisoners dilemma. Is playing “asshole” the right move?
- pclmulqdq 5y ago
  In California, unfortunately, the answer seems to be "yes." When I moved to the northeast US, drivers were more sane on highways.
  - tfigment 5y ago
    When I moved to Boston, the first lesson I learned was any gap in front of me that can fit a car will soon have one there. I think it is big cities in general not just regions.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      It is not big cities per se, it is any road that has surpassed carrying capacity. Obviously, this will be seen more in areas more densely populated with cars relative to road capacity. If you drive in south or east Asia, you will see what naturally happens when the number of vehicles on the path greatly exceed the capacity of the path traveling at a certain speed. You can basically model it as fluid dynamics at a certain point in places like Mumbai and Bangkok.
fouc 5y ago
Frankly it's fine to create enough gap that people are passing in front of you.. My response is usually to widen the gap even more. It actually has the effect of helping to smooth traffic, reducing traffic jams.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  > It actually has the effect of helping to smooth traffic, reducing traffic jams. I hear this a lot from people who practice this sort of driving, but don't the simulations suggest that the opposite is true, traffic actually improves when drivers are more aggressive?
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Having cars be "aggressive" in this context basically means they flow into the voids more readily. An example would be moving left into a "this would be an impolite move in any other context" sized cap between two cars to in order to let someone merge and then getting right back out of the lane.
  - fouc 5y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  You are also reducing throughput, and causing more congestion behind you. There is no having our cake and eating it too. Once a road hits maximum capacity at the safest distance gaps between cars, the only way to increase the road capacity is to reduce the distance gaps between cars.
  - fouc 5y ago
    In addition to increasing the gap, you have to drive steadily, with no braking. This makes you become the most predictable car on the road, people behind you can follow steadily instead of constantly accelerating & braking. This leads to reduced congestion. This CGP video covers some of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE
chronofar 5y ago
Until you realize being cut off doesn’t actually impact you much so you play a much safer game of giving everyone a wide enough berth to act like an idiot and not ruin your day. Driving habits are extremely psychologically interesting, from road rage at a stranger who did something you didn’t like to people feeling compelled, and indeed proud, of unsafe driving habits that put multiple lives at risk to save a couple minutes on a trip. An argument could be made that curing these tendencies would stand to save more lives then almost any other mass behavioral correction (saving maybe dietary choices).
- Semaphor 5y ago
  > Until you realize being cut off doesn’t actually impact you much I keep a long distance, and I drive fast. Germany, so fast means actually fast. My large safety margin means I have to keep braking because slower cars move past me and into my safety margin. Then, once the original blockage in front of me is cleared, I have to pass all those slower idiots who just overtook me again. If driving wasn’t such a rare occurrence (usually 3-4 times a year) for me, I’d probably stop keeping a large safety distance like every other asshole. Granted, race car drivers who think distance is measured in centimeters are even worse.
- Firaxus 5y ago
  Absolutely. In the context of high way driving especially with its high speeds, the slight slowing down to maintain follow distance even if people were constantly moving in is negligible to the overall trip time, and it’s highway driving where that follow distance is the most critical to saving lives. If people sat down with the numbers and realized how little that slight slowing down in the moment someone moves in front of them impacts their trip time, how little it matters to the original trip time that someone passed them, the roads would be a lot safer, less stressful, and faster overall.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    If everyone slowed down, there would be far more congestion backing up due to reducing the throughput of the road. I would argue that the people driving at distances closer to the car in front of them are reducing congestion by increasing the throughput of the road. Obviously this is mitigated by decreased throughput due to increased probability of collisions. But if EVERYONE drove such that they could fully stop if the car in front do them fully stopped, you would have a public uproar over how much backed up traffic there was. There road is basically constantly in flux and politicians could enforce minimum driving distances very easily with cameras and drive down collisions, but it would be massively unpopular and they would get voted out immediately. I presume that is why we already do not have speed cameras in the US. It would be trivial to fine everyone breaking the speed limits. Or even driving too close to each other. For a tolled road, you can get go back however many years you want and retroactively fine people for going past the speed limit based on toll time stamps. But I figure the lack of this happening means the public wants to make this risk vs convenience trade off.
croon 5y ago

Aeolun 5y ago

You can count lines at the side of the road? I’ve never found it particularly hard to silently count to two. If someone merges in front we just slow down a bit and repeat the excercise.

Xelbair 5y ago
It's not the counting that's hard. it's that others will merge in front of you constantly.
- rileymat2 5y ago
  Also as you adjust to increase the gap in front of you, the person behind starts tailgating, if they were not already.
  - projektfu 5y ago
    In my experience, tailgaters are never satisfied by the speed of the car in front of them. The only good play is to leave enough space in front to stop without getting rear-ended. In Atlanta, people will tailgate in spite of a wide open lane to the left and the driver in front going the speed of the road. I’m not going to tailgate the person in front of me just because the person behind me is tailgating.
    - Verdex 5y ago
      Yeah, tailgating the person in front of me because the person behind me is tailgating has always felt like a: "well, now I have two problems" kind of situation.
    - tremon 5y ago
      If someone is tailgating me, I purposefully slow down, to 10-15% below the speed limit. If someone is determined to crash into my car, I prefer them to do so at as low a speed as I can get.
- cameronh90 5y ago

wongarsu 5y ago

Everyone does it because the law isn't enforced, and because nobody is following the law enforcing it is seen as unreasonable. On the spectrum between charging people for involuntary manslaughter for cases like this and saying "there's nothing they could have done" we are very far on the latter part of the spectrum.

jhoechtl 5y ago
My car and that of my wife warn audibly, if the distance to the car in front is below a configurable distance. I have to actively ignore that wanring.
- FireBeyond 5y ago
  Same here. And it will display a constant icon on both the console and my HUD if I have insufficient stopping distance.
- sudden_dystopia 5y ago
- Miner49er 5y ago
  I saw someone was downvoted for calling you an asshole. I guess that doesn't really follow the spirit of HN, but it's crazy to me how much we have normalized driving dangerously as a society. We have seemingly decided it's perfectly fine to drive in a way that puts others at risk of death or serious injury. It's to the point that if you call someone out on it, like the other commenter did, you're the one in the wrong. Yet they were just calling out a person for putting other people's lives at risk. We should be condemning driving like this, just like we condemn many other activities that put other's lives at risk.
  - ensignavenger 5y ago
    There is some ambiguity in jhoechtl's comment. It isn't clear if they are saying they choose to routinely ignore the warning, or if they are saying that they would have to ignore the warning in order to routinely follow too closely and end up in a situation like was being discussed. One of the site guidelines is to interpret a comment in the best possible way, so I am choosing to interpret it as the latter.

cheschire 5y ago

I once took a defensive driving class, and the teacher's primary point throughout the whole thing is the only area of your car you have control over is the area in front of you. You obviously can't control whether people are beside you or not. You can't stop the person behind you from tailgating. All you can really do is ensure you have adequate space in front of you to respond to events.

eddieroger 5y ago
My driver's ed teacher said a similar thing about right of way - you never /have/ right of way, you are given it. I try to drive defensively, but it's a challenge when others are able to choose not to in ways that affect my driving.
- ndsipa_pomu 5y ago
  That should be "priority". Right of way is about laws allowing walkers to cross private lands etc.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
You don't have complete control of what's behind/beside you but you have some control. Maintaining situational awareness of these areas and adjusting your behavior to coax other traffic to behave in a way that is best/easiest/safest/whatever-ist for everyone is a prerequisite to being a "good" driver IMO.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  Unless it is just heavy traffic, I constantly tweak my speed and following distance to avoid driving in other driver's blind spots and ideally not be driving beside them.

SkyBelow 5y ago

>This is not a criticism of the driver, because everyone does it, It is a valid criticism of the driver and not everyone does it. It is a major problem that so many people treat safe following distances as great places to cut someone off to save .05 seconds on their commute while risking the lives of others.