You should drop the tailgating habit

If you drive too closely to the car ahead of you then you are tailgating. But who are these tailgaters and why do they do it? Let’s start close to home.
•When was the last time that you had to brake sharply to avoid colliding with the car in front?

•Or cursed under your breath (or out loud!) because the driver in front was holding you up? Then you have likely been tailgating. In order to avoid it, you need to create space between you and the car ahead.

It can be rather too difficult to estimate the recommended distances while driving and the exact distance would have to be adjusted for speed, so most experts recommend a “three-second rule.” The three-second rule is simple. Find a stationary object on the side of the road. When the car ahead of you passes it, start counting seconds. At least three seconds should pass before your car passes the same object. Once you have some driving experience and have practiced keeping this minimum distance, you will develop an instinct for it and know how close to follow without having to count.

However, even experienced drivers should count off the three-second rule now and then to make sure. At night or in bad weather, double the recommended time to six seconds. Tailgating is a habit that most people get away with most of the time. By “get away with” we mean that they are not involved in accidents and do not get stopped by the police; because of this, their perception of danger is diminished.
Most of us consider that we keep a safe distance; however, if you have had to brake suddenly because the driver in front has taken emergency action, you have been following too close. If you have been following too close, which category do you fall in to? There are different types of tailgaters.

Dreamers
Dreamers are drivers who often drift off
into a daydream behind the wheel. Dreamers pay very little attention to what is going on around because there are more important things in life to think about! After all, who cares what’s happening in front when you’re thinking about a date, a new hairstyle, your girlfriend, getting away from it all ... We all daydream, but there’s a time and a place - maybe that’s not when we are driving. Lots of dreamers end up getting away from it all ... permanently!

The distracted
We all get distracted from time to time, however, some drivers have developed distraction to a fine art. Would you just sit still a minute? Perhaps the most obvious are those who persist in believing that it is safe to use their mobile phones or other communication devices on the move.

You have probably seen truck drivers watching TV, drivers reading newspapers, map readers and drivers trying to control their children. Still, if you are a compulsive reader or puzzle book addict, your “hobby” will be useful to pass the time if you are faced with a long convalescence period (after you crash).
The short-sighted

While not literally short-sighted, these drivers are unable to relate their speed to their overall journey time. In their impatience to “get there”, they try to gain extra seconds by sitting inches away from your rear bumper. Let me pass... I have got a world to rule!

The short-sighted along with the winners (see below) have the capacity to become aggressive if they feel that you are being unreasonable by taking up the piece of road that is rightfully theirs. If you look far enough into the future, you will discover that there comes a point where time doesn’t matter anymore. Ten seconds saved on your journey is not ten seconds added to your life - and the risks involved might well result in 20 years being subtracted from your life.

The winners
“Don’t mess with me!” The winner just has to come first and pass any other driver who has the audacity to be in front of him. The crazy thing is, they don’t “win”- the cars that they pass won’t appear on their driveways 10 seconds behind them. There is no one waiting at home with a chequered flag! Winners will overtake at any cost; they seem totally ignorant of the fact that however many vehicles they overtake there will still be a few thousand more in front.

Brawn, maybe ... Brains? Definitely not!
We are simply in a hurry! There are others who could almost be forgiven for their tailgating, however, the risks are not diminished and in some cases could be greater. Maybe the tailgater is rushing to an emergency, perhaps with a pregnant wife on board.

Or it could be a dreamer who is driving that way because he/she has just received some life changing news. Then there are the advanced drivers who take up an “attack position” prior to overtaking, but who leave less than the recommended absolute minimum one-second gap.
These drivers are keen on road safety but have somehow missed the point! Perhaps the best solution is one that was, as far as we know, devised by fleet safety expert Dave Nickerson. Nickerson suggests that you should simply add one second to your forward safety gap.