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ACCORDING TO RESEARCH by DriveCam, drivers who leave less than a two-second gap between their car and the car in front are almost three times more likely to cause collisions than those who leave two or more seconds between cars.
So, if you want to reduce your risk of being in a collision just remember the two-second rule:
When the vehicle immediately in front of you passes a point of reference, such as a sign or a bridge etc, say ‘Only a fool breaks the two-second rule’.
If you pass the reference point before you finish saying it, then you are too close and should increase the gap. Ideally, you should increase the gap to three seconds between cars.
If you are being tailgated, the best thing to do is let them pass as soon as you can, and if it’s safe to do so.
If you can’t let them pass the next best thing to do is: maintain the appropriate gap with the car in front and ease off the accelerator to slow down. Don’t brake harshly.
This may not deter the tailgater but if you do get rear-ended there’ll be less damage at a slower speed.
I’d like to see an article about all the road hogs driving down the centre lane of the N7. I was driving home from Dublin at 9pm and there was a trail 10 cars long driving down the centre lane at 90 kph. Cop on drivers.
The CLOGgers (Centre Lane Owners Group) would never see such an article, as they don’t understand or care about cars, motoring or driving styles, and think that the day that they passed their test is the day they finished learning all there is to know about driving. Still, the issue is so bad on the N7 that it means that there is a perfect lane to make progress – lane one – no one uses it. All that money spent making the N7 a three lane road, and the CLOGgers render it a two-lane road every day.
The ‘two second rule’ isn’t completely infallible as people may think – in the sense that if you end up leaving massive gaps in heavy traffic i.e. up to three seconds as the article suggests, you’re enticing people to cut in front of you to bypass traffic quicker, thus in some cases leading to serious evasive action (particularly on dual carriage-/motorways).
Overall inattentiveness of some drivers is a bigger cause for concern. I regularly witness M50 speedsters at night doing upwards of 140km/h with a bright light shining in their faces and their heads hanging down in the outside lane. The case remains even during daytime driving and in any type of traffic. The aforementioned ‘rule’ is simply a failsafe for poor and/or inattentive drivers.
The new favorite activity is to pull in a few feet ahead of the car being passed, meaning it is now tailgating. Don’t know how supposed to defend against that.
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