Fun fact, in a lot of states even if they slam the brakes if you hit them you are still at fault. You should have been at a safe following distance, and no one knows what that actually means. People will argue that a distance of less than 2 seconds is totally fine and safe because they do it all the time. But a safe following distance means that at your current speed of travel if the car in front of you came to an impossibly instantaneous stop you should have time to notice and stop without hitting them.
At freeway speeds this is a minimum of 4 seconds following distance in dry condition. As in when the back of their car passes a sign that you should be able to start counting Mississippi’s and not reach that sign with the front of your car for at least 4 Mississippi’s
Now, if they come up from behind you swerve over and then instantly slam on the brakes obviously you’re fine(if you have a dash cam) there was nothing you could have done, but if you have just been riding their ass and then they slam on the brakes? You’re totally a fault as far as the law in many states is concerned
Oooh, I didn’t understand what you were talking about until the last paragraph. I always thought “brake checking” was a specific move when you change lanes in front of the car and slam on the brakes, just a type of road rage. So, when you said that you’d be at fault if you hit them in the rear, I was really confused.
On the other hand, if you “ride their ass” and they check you, that’s completely fine in my book. Personally, I always keep the safe distance and it makes me really nervous when someone follows up close as I like to be in control of the road situation around me. An animal could run onto the road, something could fall out of a nearby truck etc. I mean, what is the person behind going to do? Anyways, I don’t usually check them, but rather slow down gradually so they also have to, and then speed up. They usually get mad, but if you’re going to drive like a dick, expect someone to react.
This isn’t true, if they can stop at an impossibly fast speed, why can’t you? Let’s say they stop in 3 seconds, that means their brakes can get them from 65 to 0 in 3 seconds. If you’re 2 seconds behind them, you have 5 seconds to stop. If you react within 2 seconds, you should be able to stop in 3 seconds. The only reason you would not be able to, is if you didn’t do maintenance on your brakes,
There’s almost no person in the world who can’t react in 2 seconds.
What if they slam into a truck at highway speeds? Instantly they’ve gone ftom 100km/h to 0, and you have to stop your car before you slam into them. How much space do you need between you in this scenario?
With 2 seconds worth of space, you have about 55 meters between you, and a normal reaction time would be about 250ms, which leaves you 1.75 seconds and 48 meters to come to a complete stop. And hopefully the person behind you reacts accordingly and doesn’t slam into you as well.
This is the answer, and is exactly what happens when you see those accidents involving like 6 Plus cars. Too many people riding way too close together at high speeds and none of them were able to stop in time when the first car suddenly stopped
Fun fact, in a lot of states even if they slam the brakes if you hit them you are still at fault. You should have been at a safe following distance, and no one knows what that actually means. People will argue that a distance of less than 2 seconds is totally fine and safe because they do it all the time. But a safe following distance means that at your current speed of travel if the car in front of you came to an impossibly instantaneous stop you should have time to notice and stop without hitting them.
At freeway speeds this is a minimum of 4 seconds following distance in dry condition. As in when the back of their car passes a sign that you should be able to start counting Mississippi’s and not reach that sign with the front of your car for at least 4 Mississippi’s
Now, if they come up from behind you swerve over and then instantly slam on the brakes obviously you’re fine(if you have a dash cam) there was nothing you could have done, but if you have just been riding their ass and then they slam on the brakes? You’re totally a fault as far as the law in many states is concerned
That’s exactly the mechanism being exploited, yes.
Oooh, I didn’t understand what you were talking about until the last paragraph. I always thought “brake checking” was a specific move when you change lanes in front of the car and slam on the brakes, just a type of road rage. So, when you said that you’d be at fault if you hit them in the rear, I was really confused.
On the other hand, if you “ride their ass” and they check you, that’s completely fine in my book. Personally, I always keep the safe distance and it makes me really nervous when someone follows up close as I like to be in control of the road situation around me. An animal could run onto the road, something could fall out of a nearby truck etc. I mean, what is the person behind going to do? Anyways, I don’t usually check them, but rather slow down gradually so they also have to, and then speed up. They usually get mad, but if you’re going to drive like a dick, expect someone to react.
This isn’t true, if they can stop at an impossibly fast speed, why can’t you? Let’s say they stop in 3 seconds, that means their brakes can get them from 65 to 0 in 3 seconds. If you’re 2 seconds behind them, you have 5 seconds to stop. If you react within 2 seconds, you should be able to stop in 3 seconds. The only reason you would not be able to, is if you didn’t do maintenance on your brakes,
There’s almost no person in the world who can’t react in 2 seconds.
What if they slam into a truck at highway speeds? Instantly they’ve gone ftom 100km/h to 0, and you have to stop your car before you slam into them. How much space do you need between you in this scenario?
With 2 seconds worth of space, you have about 55 meters between you, and a normal reaction time would be about 250ms, which leaves you 1.75 seconds and 48 meters to come to a complete stop. And hopefully the person behind you reacts accordingly and doesn’t slam into you as well.
This is the answer, and is exactly what happens when you see those accidents involving like 6 Plus cars. Too many people riding way too close together at high speeds and none of them were able to stop in time when the first car suddenly stopped