4 ms·

You shouldn't tail any car in general. There's a lot more 'real' braking out there than 'phantom' braking.

buildbot 3y ago
Sure, but an unexpected full ABS lock when you can see nothing in front of the tesla is going to be yard for most to react quickly too even at a decent distance. 10 second follow distances are only possible in most metros during very light traffic.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  You only need 2 seconds to be safe. It's longer than you think.
  - andybak 3y ago
    3 is the guidance in the UK at least
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      > You should ... allow at least a two-second gap between you and the vehicle in front on high-speed roads and in tunnels where visibility is reduced. The gap should be at least doubled on wet roads and up to ten times greater on icy roads Highway code rule 126[0] says 2? [0] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/general-rules-techniques-and-advice-for-all-drivers-and-riders-103-to-158 https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/general-rules-t...
      - andybak 3y ago
        Oh. I stand corrected.
        robertlagrant 3y ago
        I mean, I think 3 is better, especially at high speeds. 2 is just the minimum.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  Then you're driving unsafely, although 10 seconds as a general rule is a straw man. At any time, a child could run out from a hidden spot and the car in front of you could have to slam on the brakes as hard as possible. Or any of a hundred other realistic scenarios. These things aren't common, but statistically they will happen to you multiple times during a lifetime of driving, and it's your responsibility to always be at a safe distance behind in order to react as well. The common rule of thumb is generally 2-3 seconds in perfect conditions, and 4-6 seconds in rain or other normal challenging conditions. 10 seconds is only in cases of ice/snow where most people wouldn't be driving in the first place (you know, when you're going just 15 mph but it still takes 5 seconds to come to a full stop on the slippery ice). The heaviness/lightness of traffic is irrelevant.
- k8sToGo 3y ago
  Phantom braking is not a full ABS lock type of braking. It’s more like a brake check.
- jjulius 3y ago
  >10 second follow distances are only possible in most metros during very light traffic. I've usually heard that it's three seconds. Even still, you control your follow distance. Even in heavy traffic, you can give yourself more space between you and the car in front of you than other people do. It's easy to do, and I've been able to do just that even in metro areas with heavy traffic.
watwut 3y ago
Real braking happens for a reason, to avert accidents. Sane drivers don't do it just randomly in perfectly safe situations. Random braking is major risk for everyone around and if you are source of it, you are in fact danger foe others.
- vosper 3y ago
  > Sane drivers don't do it just randomly in perfectly safe situations You can't always assume that you will be able to tell when a situation has turned from safe to unsafe. You just can't exactly see what the driver in front of you (or the driver in front of _them_) is seeing. And you can't assume that the driver in front of you is sane! You have to _always_ follow at a safe distance.
threeseed 3y ago
Humans in traffic are relatively easy to predict. They don’t just randomly brake for no reason.
- metalliqaz 3y ago
  ...usually
- throwaway894345 3y ago
  I hear people talk about people brake checking all the time (whether they're the brake checkers or the person tailing). A buddy of mine was tailing a (non-Tesla) car a little too closely on his motorcycle and the driver deliberately brake-checked him and he wrecked. And that's just people deliberately driving erratically, never mind the people who are responding to debris, animals, people, etc darting into the road.
  - bombolo 3y ago
    Fault of your friend for not keeping a safe distance. If both drivers only had basic insurance covering damages that aren't your fault, he got nothing and the other driver got paid for having his car damaged by a reckless driver that smashed into his car. How does your friend even know it was without reason? Maybe a kitten or a squirrel crossed the road.
    - throwaway894345 3y ago
      We’re not debating fault, we’re debating whether other drivers drive predictably. Whether the driver brake checked him or whether there was a squirrel or kitten in the road doesn’t really matter: the point is the human driver braked unpredictably. You don’t have to drive with special caution around a Tesla, you should drive with the same amount of caution that you would drive around any car. I have a Tesla and I use autopilot pretty liberally (but not carelessly—I’m always ready to take over) and phantom braking was really frustrating last year, but it was never unsafe unless perhaps someone was literally a foot or two behind you at high speed. They seem to have fixed that sometime in 2022, and since then I’ve had fewer than 5 phantom braking episodes and they have been almost imperceptible (certainly not dangerous). The Tesla critics in this thread are reacting to some pretty extreme assumptions about autopilot (that phantom braking happens all the time, that it’s less safe than the unpredictable behavior of human drivers, etc). We certainly need more evidence, but I’m going to be biased toward the people who actually have experience driving Teslas rather than the people whose information comes from the rumor mill.
pacetherace 3y ago
in most commutes, if your tailing distance is too much, someone will else will come in front of you.
- sushid 3y ago
  That's fine. You lose like .5 seconds of your life when another car comes in front of you.
  - manquer 3y ago
    It doesn't stop with one, the problem is not someone cut across, the problem is someone always keeps squeezing in the gap. Every time you open a gap, a new car cuts across. How can you maintain any gap in that context ?
- andybak 3y ago
  So? Drop back again.
  - bombolo 3y ago
    Then another car will do that… and then another… and then another… in the end it becomes way more dangerous.
- olyjohn 3y ago
  So what.
- orpheansodality 3y ago
  if you think about the speeds involved, a single additional car in front of you on the freeway (or even any additional cars) adds pretty miniscule time to the total commute. Let's compare a few situations. In the baseline you're tailing the car in front of you with a focus on not letting anyone cheat and get in front of you, let's say 50 feet away. Your commute is 30 miles, and in this frictionless sphere of traffic you're going 60mph the whole time. You get to work in 30 minutes flat. In the second scenario you're following the 3-second rule[0]. This would put you ~285 feet behind the car in front of you. Let's say over the course of your commute 20 cars move in front of you. If the average car length is 15 feet, and they all are 50 feet away from each other, when all 20 cars are in place you're a net -(20 * 65) feet away from the original car, or 1300 feet total. At 60 mph that adds ~15 seconds to your total commute time. Well worth having an easier time avoiding a potential crash IMO! Also has the benefit of helping prevent traffic to begin with[1] 0: https://driversed.com/trending/what-safe-following-distance https://driversed.com/trending/what-safe-following-distance. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE
s3p 3y ago
That's not what OP was implying.

Sure, but an unexpected full ABS lock when you can see nothing in front of the tesla is going to be yard for most to react quickly too even at a decent distance. 10 second follow distances are only possible in most metros during very light traffic.

robertlagrant 3y ago
You only need 2 seconds to be safe. It's longer than you think.
- andybak 3y ago
  3 is the guidance in the UK at least
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > You should ... allow at least a two-second gap between you and the vehicle in front on high-speed roads and in tunnels where visibility is reduced. The gap should be at least doubled on wet roads and up to ten times greater on icy roads Highway code rule 126[0] says 2? [0] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/general-rules-techniques-and-advice-for-all-drivers-and-riders-103-to-158 https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/general-rules-t...
    - andybak 3y ago
      Oh. I stand corrected.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        I mean, I think 3 is better, especially at high speeds. 2 is just the minimum.
crazygringo 3y ago
Then you're driving unsafely, although 10 seconds as a general rule is a straw man. At any time, a child could run out from a hidden spot and the car in front of you could have to slam on the brakes as hard as possible. Or any of a hundred other realistic scenarios. These things aren't common, but statistically they will happen to you multiple times during a lifetime of driving, and it's your responsibility to always be at a safe distance behind in order to react as well. The common rule of thumb is generally 2-3 seconds in perfect conditions, and 4-6 seconds in rain or other normal challenging conditions. 10 seconds is only in cases of ice/snow where most people wouldn't be driving in the first place (you know, when you're going just 15 mph but it still takes 5 seconds to come to a full stop on the slippery ice). The heaviness/lightness of traffic is irrelevant.
k8sToGo 3y ago
Phantom braking is not a full ABS lock type of braking. It’s more like a brake check.
jjulius 3y ago
>10 second follow distances are only possible in most metros during very light traffic. I've usually heard that it's three seconds. Even still, you control your follow distance. Even in heavy traffic, you can give yourself more space between you and the car in front of you than other people do. It's easy to do, and I've been able to do just that even in metro areas with heavy traffic.

watwut 3y ago

Real braking happens for a reason, to avert accidents. Sane drivers don't do it just randomly in perfectly safe situations. Random braking is major risk for everyone around and if you are source of it, you are in fact danger foe others.

vosper 3y ago
> Sane drivers don't do it just randomly in perfectly safe situations You can't always assume that you will be able to tell when a situation has turned from safe to unsafe. You just can't exactly see what the driver in front of you (or the driver in front of _them_) is seeing. And you can't assume that the driver in front of you is sane! You have to _always_ follow at a safe distance.

threeseed 3y ago

Humans in traffic are relatively easy to predict. They don’t just randomly brake for no reason.

metalliqaz 3y ago
...usually
throwaway894345 3y ago
I hear people talk about people brake checking all the time (whether they're the brake checkers or the person tailing). A buddy of mine was tailing a (non-Tesla) car a little too closely on his motorcycle and the driver deliberately brake-checked him and he wrecked. And that's just people deliberately driving erratically, never mind the people who are responding to debris, animals, people, etc darting into the road.
- bombolo 3y ago
  Fault of your friend for not keeping a safe distance. If both drivers only had basic insurance covering damages that aren't your fault, he got nothing and the other driver got paid for having his car damaged by a reckless driver that smashed into his car. How does your friend even know it was without reason? Maybe a kitten or a squirrel crossed the road.
  - throwaway894345 3y ago
    We’re not debating fault, we’re debating whether other drivers drive predictably. Whether the driver brake checked him or whether there was a squirrel or kitten in the road doesn’t really matter: the point is the human driver braked unpredictably. You don’t have to drive with special caution around a Tesla, you should drive with the same amount of caution that you would drive around any car. I have a Tesla and I use autopilot pretty liberally (but not carelessly—I’m always ready to take over) and phantom braking was really frustrating last year, but it was never unsafe unless perhaps someone was literally a foot or two behind you at high speed. They seem to have fixed that sometime in 2022, and since then I’ve had fewer than 5 phantom braking episodes and they have been almost imperceptible (certainly not dangerous). The Tesla critics in this thread are reacting to some pretty extreme assumptions about autopilot (that phantom braking happens all the time, that it’s less safe than the unpredictable behavior of human drivers, etc). We certainly need more evidence, but I’m going to be biased toward the people who actually have experience driving Teslas rather than the people whose information comes from the rumor mill.

pacetherace 3y ago

in most commutes, if your tailing distance is too much, someone will else will come in front of you.

sushid 3y ago
That's fine. You lose like .5 seconds of your life when another car comes in front of you.
- manquer 3y ago
  It doesn't stop with one, the problem is not someone cut across, the problem is someone always keeps squeezing in the gap. Every time you open a gap, a new car cuts across. How can you maintain any gap in that context ?
andybak 3y ago
So? Drop back again.
- bombolo 3y ago
  Then another car will do that… and then another… and then another… in the end it becomes way more dangerous.
olyjohn 3y ago
So what.
orpheansodality 3y ago
if you think about the speeds involved, a single additional car in front of you on the freeway (or even any additional cars) adds pretty miniscule time to the total commute. Let's compare a few situations. In the baseline you're tailing the car in front of you with a focus on not letting anyone cheat and get in front of you, let's say 50 feet away. Your commute is 30 miles, and in this frictionless sphere of traffic you're going 60mph the whole time. You get to work in 30 minutes flat. In the second scenario you're following the 3-second rule[0]. This would put you ~285 feet behind the car in front of you. Let's say over the course of your commute 20 cars move in front of you. If the average car length is 15 feet, and they all are 50 feet away from each other, when all 20 cars are in place you're a net -(20 * 65) feet away from the original car, or 1300 feet total. At 60 mph that adds ~15 seconds to your total commute time. Well worth having an easier time avoiding a potential crash IMO! Also has the benefit of helping prevent traffic to begin with[1] 0: https://driversed.com/trending/what-safe-following-distance https://driversed.com/trending/what-safe-following-distance. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzzSao6ypE

s3p 3y ago

That's not what OP was implying.