Incredibly frustrating, and I've driven all over North America - there's practically no major city where this doesn't happen. If you're not maintaining a safe following distance on city/residential streets, that's a different matter.
I will never understand why this is so rage-inducing for people.
Changing lanes is a necessary part of navigating, even during busy traffic. People on an on-ramp will need to get in front of somebody. People needing to move back to the right because their exist is coming up will need to get in front of somebody.
Your lane is not a birth right. Let people merge.
> you slow down to maintain a safe following distance, another car sees a gap and changes lanes in front of you. Repeat for your entire commute.
This happens because literally everyone is tailgating each other so hard that the gap in front of you is the only gap that exists for people to change lanes to either get on or off the highway.
Putting my armchair psychoanalyst hat on: I think American society embeds a need to be the "winner", and are you winning if end up behind another driver who's contending for "your" spot?
If you've driven elsewhere for a while, you start noticing subtle driver differences, such as drivers who want to merge into your (slower) lane never braking to merge behind you and always accelerating to do so, even when you're at the tail end of a vehicle chain in your lane.
I think if you reflect a bit you'll find you are being the same kind of person as them, if you are getting angry that you have to slow down and give up space for someone else.
I've had times where the right lane ends up being the fastest. On I-5 near Woodburn, OR, it's 3 lanes. So many drivers, including truckers, will often stay out of the right lane entirely to avoid being caught up in traffic coming on/off. Meanwhile, the left lane is going 5 mph under the limit because there's a left-lane camper somewhere miles ahead. So I can fly past everybody in the right lane because there's actually barely any traffic coming on/off and everybody is avoiding the right lane for no reason at all.
The section of I-5 between Portland and Salem is absolutely psychotic, and I have never been able to reason out exactly why. It consistently has a left lane jammed with angry people going at or below the speed limit, a fairly normal center lane filled with cruisers, and a mostly empty right lane with the occasional big rig and regular very-high-speed cars expressing their frustration with the left lane by going 25+ mph over the limit in the right lane.
I know that's what you basically just said. Just venting. The driver behavior in that section of freeway confounds me, and I do not know what the underlying cause is. It is otherwise an unremarkable bit of interstate like any other.
There are plenty of ramps on I5 and 205 that I merge to the left for because I know they will spill into the right and (when it exists) middle lanes. Because of how traffic also reacts to brake lights (some people brake too hard even when they have sufficient distance to let off the gas and coast to a slower speed) it seems like it ends up making my experience through those stretches a bit better.
Ultimately, any individual behaviour is largely irrelevant, it's what the whole mass of cars moving along does that affects things the most. Often you don't want to be the (significantly) odd one out regardless of the situation.
Would I love to see CHP or OHP fine every left lane trucker in the 'no trucks in left lane' zones? Hell yes, but until that happens, I understand the trucker behaviour.
What I really hate, however, is that plenty of people will cruise in the center lane but still not leave a decent gap between them and the car in front. They effectively turn a three lane freeway into two one-lane freeways by hobbling the ability of anyone else to switch lanes. The freeway moves way smoother when there is a modest, predictable speed differential between each lane so that people can find their way into the next lane over without having to force the issue.
It's the people who aggressively slide right over just a few feet in front of me (cutting off nearly all of my safety buffer) without so much as a signal that really drive me nuts.
When flows merge, there's turbulence. There's less turbulence if the flows are more closely matched, including speed.
So for the love of gods, if you're merging, even if you signal, match speeds for merging. If you're too slow to match speed, then suck it up buttercup, and hang out in the right lane until there's an opening.
> someone is taking your safety buffer as their opportunity to travel faster
Nobody is 'taking' something; we're all just sharing the road, and at little cost. People change lanes for many reasons, and sometimes to pass someone else and travel faster. That's what the left lane (if we're talking about the US) is for.
> results in you having to travel slower and slower to maintain the gap that is constantly consumed,
I understand the theory but that hasn't happened in my experience.
And even if five or ten cars got in front of you, how much distance is that? A random Internet site says the average midsize car is 16 feet; add 220 ft safe driving distance at 75 mph (says another random website), so let's say 240 ft per car x 10 cars is 2400 ft. In that extreme circumstance, it will cost you ~30 seconds.
It's self-fulfilling: If you act aggressively toward other drivers, they will respond in kind. If you treat them respectfully and politely, they act the same way toward you. People behave well and kindly, naturally. We are social creatures.
All of the people tailgating are contributing to the congestion.
I don't drive as often as I used to, but on I-76 coming into or out of Philadelphia, traffic gets snarled and becomes stop-and-go. Every now and then, someone next to me appears to have the same understanding of fluid dynamics as I do, and we build up enough of a buffer that we are able to eliminate the stop-and-go, even if it means rolling at 5mph with a big gap between us and the cars in front of us.
There's no good way to communicate what we're doing, even to each other. But I like to think that when this happens, it has a positive effect that ripples out for miles.
It's especially not people trying to get off the highway because then they leave and you can catch back up to where you originally were.
It's simply not possible to merge during heavy traffic without eating into someone's safe following distance.
This ensures that
a) I do not cut anyone off accidentally, and minimize the amount of stress in my immediate part of the universe
b) I will (most likely) have plenty of room behind me after I change lanes, reducing chances of anyone else running up on me
c) If there's noticeable traffic, the time I spend signaling and waiting for the person to move slightly ahead of me gives plenty of warning to the people _behind_ them that I'm about to enter the lane.
Ultimately, yes, of course in principle you're right, when I change lanes, I enter the lane in front of someone.... but I _can_ control whether I enter as far as possible ahead of them.
And in inclement conditions, it can make the difference between losing control of your vehicle or not. When you brake, you decrease your steering ability in most cars. Fine when its calm and sunny in CA, not so much when it's icing over near Ashland OR on the pass.
My point is, it feels safer and easier to aim to enter a new lane with the aim of "following" someone, rather than trying to rush in "ahead" of someone. But maybe it's just me.
It doesn't even have to be real. There's huge room for miscommunication. Unpredictable movements and perceived aggression, or unwillingness to be considerate to other drivers on the road, there's a whole wealth of information being processed, regardless of how little is actually real.
Now add the total lack of accountability for the driver's emotional state (don't you love yelling at other drivers, completely free of judgement?), and you can see how things spiral into road rage so relatively easily, even if everyone involved is normally a pretty chill, rational person.
If you're tailgating or brake-checking, or being inattentive and sloppy, you're basically threatening people's lives with a few tons of high speed metal, even if you don't intend that at all.
Ideally, the rules of the road are meant to reinforce a mutual understanding of the game being played. Behavior occurring when expected, proper signaling, observing limits, and making the effort to communicate where possible is a signal that you and the other driver are both operating by the same set of rules, giving you both confidence that neither of you are going to be a danger.
I've seen little "cute" exceptions where locals develop a subculture of dangerous assumptions and then get aggravated when someone from out of town doesn't immediately get it. There are other areas where aggression and what amounts to flagrant disrespect are the norm, so you've always gotta be adaptive, but ideally you get people conspicuously following the same set of rules as a sort of game theoretic optimal strategy for driving.
The train of tought goes something like this. You want to get to your destination quickly as just like everyone else and are doing everything correctly, but the assholes exploit that safety distance as a gap available for them to switch into and repeatedly forcing you to break to maintain a safe distance. Oh and the even less rational people think everyone overtaking them has stolen their rat race position.
Leaving a keeping a safe distance feels unsafe since other drivers will squeeze into it. Subjectively it feels safer to close the distance, but the numbers don't lie. Tailgating kills.
But even if 2 dozen people go around you and creep into that following space, you've been cost like 45 seconds at worst. Better not to play the game.
Sometimes I think it's just people's reflexive scarcity mindset that tells them "that spot must not be that desirable or someone would be in it."
Regarding the broader topic of hitting your brakes, I find that I can commute 20 miles in stop and go traffic and only tap my brakes a couple of times. Helps to pace yourself behind the car 3 cars ahead of you instead of the guy right in front of you.
So it's bad to be mad while driving, but there's a lot of lane changes that deserve the ire. (It's a tiny fraction of drivers that get really bad, but a less tiny fraction of lane changes.)
Yes, but the comment above was about society collectively making a decision, so that's the context I responded in.
And while it's relaxing to not worry about your own exact speed, I don't see how that lets you avoid stressing about the people that are lane-weaving. They're acting dangerously and I need to be ready to react to them.
Not a significant cost. But they sure as shit aren't getting what they think they're getting. Meaningfully farther ahead.
I now see it all as a risk assessment rather than as ritualistic combat.
Even if I do need to brake, speeding up more slowly also usually means I have more buffer time to slow down too.
You're just going to wind up being approximately the slowest person on the road, which is fine if you're constantly trying to go slower to build space but this means that a bunch of traffic that would have not gone around you will do so. This ups the danger vs a steady flow less all these lane changes because every "thing" other people do is an opportunity to do it badly.
Kinda ironic when you consider that TFA was about detecting dangerous merge situations in the data.
The article stuff definitely doesn't.
Driving with bad drivers should incentivize you to follow less closely and require less hard braking, not more.
There's a motte where some poor fellow is always maintaining the car-length-for-every-10-mph rule and yet keeps being passed inside that distance by innumerable bad drivers the fellow is surrounded by.
I pity that fellow.
He has an excuse.
He also isn't observably real in any of my 21 years of driving in Buffalo, Boston, and Los Angeles.
I feel harsh for saying this, I am only saying it because A) this subthread is specifically about there isn't an excuse B) this stuff involves our lives. Thus, this is an appropriate venue because the people in the venue know what to expect, and poking at someone's thoughts on it may help them immeasurably.
It's almost as if the purpose of the system is what it does.
It does require patience to do this, because all aggressive drivers will use the space you provide. But ultimately the travel time difference in flowing traffic is negligible.
And from personal experience in some places, keeping such a buffer, in some traffic conditions would just literally be impossible. There are sometimes enough aggressive drivers such that they can just consume it faster than one would be able to create it. It is simply not always the case that you have sole power to create and keep the recommended buffer size (although very often it is and you can).
I keep a decent buffer whenever I am able, but at some point, you have to bow to road conditions.
Traffic moving with an approximately constant following distance is safer than traffic where one element is constantly traveling under speed to build up a following distance and is slowly filtering to the back as traffic comes upon and then moves around it. If the lane people are pulling into for passing is traveling substantially faster than the traffic that is being queued up behind to be passed then some amount of the people pulling out to pass are necessarily going to do so aggressively or within thinner than "perfect world" margins.
Every thing drivers on the road must perform carries some inherent risk. That a bunch of traffic that would have not gone around you will have done so means that many otherwise unnecessary merges or lane changes and then lane changes back will have happened. Each one of these represents an opportunity for things to go wrong above whatever the baseline is.
What I am saying is not groundbreaking or rocket science and the fact that I have to spell it out in detail to an adversarial audience speaks volumes about this audience and the volumes it speaks are not positive.
I recently pulled my travel trailer from OK to Charleston, SC and back. I never drive over 65 MPH for safety and MPG reasons. I always stay in the right hand, slow lane except if I have to take a left lane exit. Since I was always driving slower then everyone else, not once did I have to hard brake. Tailgating is a choice and a dangerous one.
I was never honked at, even by the crazy semi truck drivers.
Because you were towing a camper and "slow and in the right lane" fits people's mental model of how recreational/nonprofessional heavy traffic or otherwise "handicapped" vehicles ought to behave.
When you have problems is when you behave to a standard beneath what other people expect from whatever kind of traffic you are.
I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
And Psychologists!
Reading the comments in this thread is quite amusing.
As a driver in India, i can tell you anything goes as long as you don't get into an accident (which may/may-not kill you) or get caught by the police.
No rules matter and the only goal is to "one-up" everybody else on the road and if they are trying to "one-up" you, then prevent it by any means possible. It is a "game of chicken" in its purest form; game theory in action. Rules are mere suggestions only followed by the meek and the weak.
You have no idea how invigorating it is to drive in India.
I was only briefly in India and did not drive while there, but the one rule that everyone adhered to was: communicate what you're doing by honking.
If you are stopped: honk to let people know.
If you are moving: honk to let people know.
If you are turning: honk to let people know.
If you are proceeding straight: honk to let people know.
If you are on a motorbike or in an autorickshaw: honk twice to let people know.
Etc.
Setting the side mirrors based on the AAA method works for a lot of reasons, and it helps with this too. So does flipping the center mirror over to the dark side.
Out of sight, out of mind.
They can be elect to stay back there behaving however they want, or they can go around be however they need to be somewhere else.
If you just can't stand it anymore, then just hop off the highway. It can be a good opportunity to stop for some coffee or a soda. Or, you know: Just to get out of the car, stretch out the ol' legs, and taste that acrid city air, think about something or someone in the world that is beautiful for you, and chill down a second.
Or just go up one exit ramp and down the entrance ramp on the other side of the crossroad, if the intersection design allows this move to be made safely and conveniently.
They almost certainly won't follow. They'll instead be disappearing down the highway at warp speed the whole time you're doing this, and you'll probably never across them again in your entire life.
It only costs a few minutes. They may seem interminable, but they're few. The benefit is relief from the mounting agony of dealing with this aggressive driver that might otherwise stick with you the rest of the day and that's good for your brain health.
(And if they do follow after you give them every opportunity to not do that? It's not Hollywood or the national news and this actually doesn't happen much in the real world on an individual level, but: Call the police at 911 or 999 or 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3 or whatever it is, and get some help.)
The solution is just to stay out of Atlanta, or drive faster. I'm OK with that.
Not really sure where you were going with all this. Sounds like pretty extreme, weird behavior that you are advocating.
Advice for when someone is following closely in anger that summarizes to "try getting off the highway for a minute and if that fails call the cops." is suggesting you perform "extreme, weird behavior"? I don't understand your reaction at all.
The first weapon to be employed is a Middle Finger. If that proves ineffective, it's followed by a lugnut taken from a coffee can that I keep handy. If and when things get to that level, the person usually wises up quick and finds a new hobby. There are other tools available if the nutcase decides to escalate further.
No, in this case it was just people speeding along at 95 (in a 70) who were terribly offended at my dangerously slow driving, who wished to register their indignation as they flew by, momentarily held back but undeterred as they sped off to their Bright New Tomorrow. Message received, loud and clear.
Escalation usually doesn't improve things, including for the person displaying the universal finger (or throwing the lug nut).
You've got a choice: You can keep plodding along in your truck while you escalate and retaliate and get all grumpy and stuff, or just keep plodding along in your truck without any of that noise.
The errant, instigating driver won't really learn anything either way.
I, uh, okay but I hope you realize that this is far more extreme than what the other person was suggesting!
Exiting and immediately reentering a freeway is also less extreme.
Calling the cops if someone that is raging at you follows you when you do that is not extreme.
Nobody suggested "driving all over creation".
So much of road etiquette boils down to leaving adequate space so others can maneuver around you. Trying to optimize your travel by destroying any gaps as soon as they appear actually has the opposite effect.
However, on the rare occasion I've found myself going slowly in the right lane, it's stunning how incompetent most people are at merging. It's like they don't even consider looking for an opening in traffic, matching the freeway speed, etc. They just lumber in front of you at 43mph, and maybe, if you're lucky, look in their mirrors after they've already caused you to slow for them.
Speed is a very dangerous thing when pulling any type of trailer and it always amazes me when I see a truck pulling one at break neck speeds and somehow thinking they can maneuver normally when someone causes a situation where they have to make a split second decision.
The only people who cut too close to me are driving recklessly.
That being said: If you're in the mode where people are constantly changing lanes in front of you, think a bit about how you're driving: On the freeway you're supposed to stay to the right except to pass, and you're expected to keep up with the flow of traffic. Are you going slow in the left lane? Are you driving too slow? Are you camping in the right lane by a busy interchange?
This is very state dependent, if we are talking about legality.
In WA state, for example, there is no "flow of traffic" law or similar. The limit is the limit, and any excess of the speed limit is illegal regardless of what all other drivers are doing. So even if the right/slow lane is going 100MPH through the 70MPH zone, you are legally expected to still go 70.
Thankfully we do have laws against left lane camping, but I rarely see it enforced.
This has nothing to do with the expectation that slower traffic stay in the rightmost lanes, which is what GP is addressing.
Are you sure? And by that I mean, are you sure there are states that don't work the way WA works?
As far as I can tell it's pure selfishness and competitiveness. Their desire isn't to cooperate and arrive it's to take from others for their own gain.
Also "Only pass in the left lane" only makes sense when the lanes aren't significantly full. The guy in the left lane wants to do 90mph but the average speed of traffic is <55mph. Should I move over just because I'm doing 55 (despite wanting to do 65) and they want to do 90? They can only do 90 if there's a cascading group of drivers in front of them who defer their own desires to the desire of the most aggressive. Seems obvious to me that moving over to let them pass is not the right move.
1. In any amount of traffic above “a few cars” people will cut in front of me, sometimes two, negating the safe following distance. Regardless of speed.
2. If I have a safe following distance while waiting for someone to get over. (I e they’re going 60, I want to go 70), if I have my distance set at a safe following distance, people are much more likely to weave / pass on the right. (My theory would be that the distance I’m behind the person in front of them signals that I’m not going to accelerate / pass when the person gets over ).
Disclaimer: I don’t usually have to drive in any significant traffic, and when I do (Philly, New York City), I’m probably less likely to use the automatic features because the appropriate follow distance seems to increase the rage of drivers around me.
At any rate, even if people are continuously going around you like water going around a rock in a stream, you only have to drive 2 mph slower than traffic to constantly rebuild your following distance from the infinite stream of cutoffs. But my experience is the majority of following distance is eaten up by people randomly slowing down, not cutting in.
The issue is not that I can’t rebuild the following distance, the point I’m trying to make is that even if I constantly rebuild the following distance it sets off a cascading effect.
I’m following at set speed, car cuts in front, hits brakes, I now slow down, car behind me slows down, I rebuild following distance and car perhaps 7-8-9 cars behind me repeats because at some point the cascade magnifies to a larger slowdown behind.
Can I mitigate this by manually letting my distance be closer for a time, and slowly easing to larger ? Yes.
But if I allow the car to do it automatically, it will increase the follow distance at a rate that causes a cascade in tight traffic.
Though - I do think with these discussions on HN- it does depend on where you’re driving.
My experiences are centered on East Coast, thinking of route 80, 81, 83, etc. or Philly / New York City.
The driving experience is radically different in California, Florida , or the mid west.
I would say when driving in California people seem to navigate traffic better. (SF, LA) then on drivers on 80/81/83. (Or perhaps it’s due to better designed roads ).
However - I will say most of the roads I’m on are 2 lanes of traffic. I will have to experiment and see if this doesn’t occur when there are 3 or 4 lanes.
One part of your post was about people passing on the right. People won't do that if you're in the rightmost lane.
What I will say is some of this may be the difference between manual driving - and automatic.
If I’m manually driving - where my follow distance fluctuates more due to speed / traffic - almost no one cuts in.
If I am driving where I’m using the vehicle to maintain a perfect set distance, people cut in.
Again, anecdotal
People only take your lane if you are in the fastest lane. If you are in any slower lane, people tend to jump in and then leave and I have no problem with people who do that.
You can also keep a gap in the fastest lane but you need to keep track of other cars on the road. You’ll observe that most cars rarely leave their lane. People who tend to leave their lane keep smaller gaps in front of them. Use that knowledge. There are many more factors than just that but if you start observing everyone drive, your little simulation in your head will start putting other drivers into buckets.
Having driven all over NA, and Europe, I find it more prevalent in NA. Less distance, more people in large pickups throwing their weight around to make someone move out of the way.
And a design of giant freeway interchanges that require shifting lanes.
E.g. on the 405 in CA. 7 lines going South from the Valley towards Santa Monica.
That's 7 lanes you need to cross if you're in the HOV lane.
The 401 is my favourite with eighteen lanes, four for the inner express lanes, and five for the collector lanes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Highway_401#/media/Fil...
Somebody on the radio said that "just set the adaptive cruise control to max distance and your windshield will last way longer". It does feel overprotective at times, especially in slow and dense traffic, but I think there's a nice point in general.
#trustmebro
#science
More like a few seconds.
Every car that merges in front of you only costs you their following distance. If the average following distance is 1 second, then you are simply 1 second slower than you'd have otherwise been. So unless this is happening continuously every 30 seconds on your 30 minute commute, you will lose less than a minute.
The "but if I kept reasonable following distance, people will keep merging in front of me and I'll lose time" excuse is pretty thin given this analysis.
And an insurance claim can easily eat 40 hours of time between the insurance companies, other lawyers, buying a new car, medical appointments and recovery. That's 19,200 minutes you won't get back, or about 52 years of driving 1 minute slower each day.
Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
A slight increase in average speed really only makes a significant difference over long drives. (5 mph increase over a 10 hour drive can cut off 50 minutes).
Otherwise we are talking about small differences in efficiency.
(I would be very open to another opinion here.).
My opinions are formed by nearly ~2 million miles driven at this point, two different driving courses, and the motorcycle safety course.
One thing I truly think that’s overlooked is how reduced road noise in the vehicle cabin can both reduce driver fatigue, but also frustration in traffic.
Yes! I feel like I can't shout this loud enough. In addition to maintaining a safe driving distance, just leave a little earlier. The stuff I've seen people do in order to save 20 seconds boggles the mind.
Unfortunately, I think commuters fall into a gamification mindset. They're trying to set a new lap record each day, and you can see the results just by driving (or walking) during rush hour...
You can't really say that without knowing the starting speed, or alternatively the distance. All you can say is that a 5 mph increase over a 10 hour drive with get you 50 miles farther.
If you do a comparison of a 600 mile trip at 60 vs 55 you’re pretty close.
But yes, to be pedantic and more exact, you are spot on that it will get you 50 miles closer.
But in real world examples,
If you’re traveling 700 miles.
65 vs 70, 70 will reduce your time by 43 minutes.
So in certain scenarios, 5 mph difference must be able to save you 50 minutes ! ;)
(I do understand your point, and you’re correct. I’m just poking fun at it- my point with the mph difference is because 50 miles doesn’t have the same translation for most people at 50 minutes, but is a more accurate data approach. )
That is true. If you're going 55 mph for 10 hours, you'll go 550 miles. Increase your speed to 60 mph, and you'll get there at 9 hours 10 minutes.
Unfortunately, sometimes over a 45 minute freeway commute, dropping back repeatedly means arriving 15 minutes or more later. Again, no big deal now, but it was somehow unacceptable when I was younger.
I can easily shave 10% off my commute by lane changing to avoid the lanes where turn lane traffic tends to back up into the travel lanes, ramp traffic and "problem people". I test the null hypothesis several times a month by carrying bulky topheavy cargo that precludes a bunch of lane changing without more effort than I want to put in.
I don't think there's much to be gained by simply lane changing to chase fleeting gaps in traffic. The wins and losses will probably mostly cancel out.
Also "Keep Two Chevrons Apart" is going to be the name of my specialist Citroën breaker's yard.
On the occasion when I am towing our travel trailer, it is really incredible how unsafe that makes other drivers act around me. They will jam themselves in front of me at all costs, with no consideration for physics.
I know you were probably writing tongue in cheek, but that is one of those "solutions" that doesn't stop bad actors and makes good actors more miserable than usual.
[1] SF drivers will get that.
it's largely a problem in the left lanes, thats where drivers will bunch up most. the subjective feeling is mostly a reptile brain issue though, the feeling you're getting done over. driving is 90% id, sadly.
To be sure, it's more mentally taxing to hold a tight gap, so it's not something you want to do all the time, but it's fine.
I just put adaptive cruise control on max distance and call it a day, gives me 4/5s to react, and also it starts beeping hard if intervention is required.
It has saved my bacon a couple of times.
Indeed, when someone changes lanes in front of me, I gently let off the accelerator, but as someone else noticed, that can enrage drivers behind me (I don't take it personally), and I'm definitely traveling fast enough to remain in the middle lanes.
This diagram changed how I think about following distance: https://entropicthoughts.com/keep-a-safe-following-distance
Just a few of these was enough that my "discount" was only a few dollars. I regret giving Progressive my driving data.
The only possible fix as a driver was to try to develop an intuition for spotting “stale” greens and start slowing down despite the green, anticipating the yellow.
I feel at least partially vindicated by the fact the lights in question eventually had their yellows extended.
What will happen if there's some oil spill or brake failure at the point you think you should break hard?
Obviously the calculus changes at rush hour when the exit ramp (and highway) begin to back up. And in those cases, yes, of course the correct answer is to slow down before the ramp, even if it means impeding traffic. (Or take the next exit.)
Just for fun, there's also a very short entrance ramp onto a 65mph highway in this city, which requires you to accelerate uphill from a stop sign with a very limited runway (~200 ft.) This entrance has been responsible for far more accidents and crashes than the exit I initially described.
The incentives just don't line up.
It's probably the best single thing anyone can do to improve safety. It also reduces wear-and-tear on your car, and increases your fuel economy as a side benefit.
Why hasn't gamification of safe driving habits been built directly into the car itself before now?
It also shows how close you are to the car Infront in "car length" units with a nice big indicator and the adaptive cruse control will follow that distance mostly on its own between 30-100mph
Instead of pretending to shift responsibility to the car, how about people do training every so often instead? Maybe every ten years for an hour or two.
The amount of work a young person has to do here to be able to obtain a "full license" takes literal years and multiple tests.
But then nothing for the rest of their life despite advances in technology (in and out of the car) and changed traffic conditions...
I think it will also back down the cruise control (if set) if it detects that you are gaining on the car ahead. That might be MILs Toyota though.
I learned the "two second rule" in Driver's Education 45 years ago and generally follow that. Nothing more annoying than having the car behind you riding your bumper.
I'm all in for traction control and to some extent ABS, but braking hard and upsetting the car's balance when you don't need it is dangerous.
That drives me nuts. When you put x amount of force into the brake pedal, you should know you're going to get y amount of deceleration. Don't double the brake boost just because you decided it's an emergency due to some opaque criteria.
No, it's just breaking a bit too hard for you while the panel beeps and has scary red lights pop (that you'll have a hard time reading).
I am so glad it hasn't. Data point of one, but gamification now has the opposite effect on me: it's such a well-worn pattern that it just annoys me. It was great when it was novel. I wonder how many others feel the same but without sampling it's hard to know.
I also think some of the car sensors (Subaru especially) that are trying to make you safer are notoriously bad.
I also find the random “coffee break” notice on Subarus frustrating.
My personal examples: “eyes on the road” - triggered frequently by one pair of sunglasses I have, looking left to check blind spot, checking mirrors, etc.
“Hands on the steering wheel” - triggered occasionally on long drives when I have been giving input, but very light input.
I'd barely left the yard, certainly hadn't made it across town.
It went off when I actually did stop for a coffee, but went on again 15 minutes after I left the car park.
I have to say its various combinations of bings and bongs and beeps were about the most distracting thing I've ever experienced in a vehicle.
Unless it’s in Netherlands, where it’s 100%.
Also, a bad driver mis-breaking trips the cars behind into breaking too, which multiplies the energy waste and may also cause accidents through fatigue.
Mare experienced drivers will give you more leeway to avoid tapping the brakes with you, or simply go for a staring overtake.
Now she still has the machine, still follows too closely, and still breaks too hard in her new car...
Good it worked for you though!
No smooth maintaining of speed and nice passes as able without slowing down.
Surprisingly, his accidents have mostly seemed to involve gas pumps, barriers, and other obstacles at low speed.
This always stuck with me
I remember being too aggressive when I got to the Bay Area, and learning how nice it was to be let into the lane I needed to avoid being forced on a 5mi U-turn. When visiting back home I was too nice and people told me so.
I've reached a balance. Aggressive enough not to be taken advantage of, but being nice to drivers in need, specially when it doesn't really change things for me, like when letting a driver in costs me nothing because of how bad traffic is.
Calling that person an idiot for your misunderstanding is not cool.
Although I keep a varying follow distance, if there is an open lane immediately adjacent to me, I don't care if i'm tailing someone a bit, but if I'm boxed then you better believe it's 6+ car distance.
Not in my case. I keep plenty of following distance, 9 times out of 10 my hard braking is because some idiot cuts into that following distance and brake-checks me.
This perfectly illustrates this broken mental model that leads to endless frustration.
Unless you put the car in reverse, you are still making forward progress. If someone merges in front of you at 30mph then you traveled hundreds of feet towards your destination in the time it took them to do that. Chill out.