05-17-2011, 07:19 PM
The ugly truth is that in stop-and-go traffic, on a multi-lane highway, maintaining the "correct" distance between your car and the one in front of you is virtually impossible.
As soon as more than one car length opens up in front of you, someone from an adjacent lane will always move into that space and thereby remove that "correct" distance.
If you insist on trying to maintain that correct distance, you will again open up a space which will be filled by another car from an adjacent lane, and so on, and so on; ensuring that you - and any car behind you will slowly fall behind the overall flow of all the traffic.
This falling behind will drive many of those drivers behind you crazy - regardless of whether it's just a delay of a few seconds, or many minutes (and in locations like Los Angeles it could easily be tens of minutes or more.)
As soon as more than one car length opens up in front of you, someone from an adjacent lane will always move into that space and thereby remove that "correct" distance.
If you insist on trying to maintain that correct distance, you will again open up a space which will be filled by another car from an adjacent lane, and so on, and so on; ensuring that you - and any car behind you will slowly fall behind the overall flow of all the traffic.
This falling behind will drive many of those drivers behind you crazy - regardless of whether it's just a delay of a few seconds, or many minutes (and in locations like Los Angeles it could easily be tens of minutes or more.)