groman,
I’m done with your stupidity in this thread. I’m also not impressed at all with your cute little stunt of inserting “just following orders” into the discussion. You obviously want to castigate the police, not the actual parties who are at fault. Unless I somehow got transported to another universe, I will retain my assumption that the drivers in the OP were–and remain to this minute–human beings and, as such, are responsible for their own actions.
Sounds like someone has a case of the Hyundais.
Wrong.
Wrong.
No, the best you can do is to let people merge in front of you which is what I do every day in rush hour. And I still make it to work and back.
groman, which street were you on? I ask because I could count the cops looking for speeders with the fingers of one hand in 11 years of driving on 880. In fact, I asked about why there couldn’t be more cops near our high school flagging down speeders once, and it turns out that most of the revenue goes to the state, so local police departments don’t make money on speeders. They actually do it for safety, like they did on 17. Believe me, when I lived in New Jersey I saw a lot more cops on the highways than I do here. There are some trying to catch carpool lane violators, though.
Shit happens. My daughter was stopped on an exit ramp once, and she got hit by someone pushed into her when he was hit by someone. She had left enough space so she didn’t hit the car in front of her. The guy behind you was the asshole. If he drove the way you did, there wouldn’t have been an accident at all. You should pit him, not the cop. If there were more cops on the freeways, maybe they could but down on the number of morons who cut across three lanes to exit at the last minute, something I see all the time.
I just wanted to add my agreement with gladiadelmarre and Giraffe. I’ve lived in LA all of my 32 years, and I’ve never had a problem keeping enough distance between my car and the car immediately in front of me. If someone jumps in front of me, I adjust so that I have the same distance from them, and then get right back up to the speed I was going before.
And I think the greatest blame here belongs to the idiot who slammed on his brakes at the site of law enforcement, with second place belonging to the person at the rear who started the chain reaction. However, the motorist who first rear-ended someone in front of him may have been guilty of inattentiveness rather than following too closely. Still a bad and blame-worthy offense, but not the same as tailgating, and certainly not as bad as over-reacting and endangering other motorists when there was no cause for any reaction whatsoever.
I don’t appreciate the idea of law enforcement officials acting with no motivation beyond collecting revenue. However, even if that were the case in this circumstance, that does not mean the officer in any way created a dangerous situation.
Around the Bay Area there are plenty of people who feel the need to leave about five car lengths when driving 10 mph in heavy traffic. These same people slam on the brakes when someone pulls into the gap, way ahead of them, since their reflexes are so damn slow any less space would be unsafe.
Some of them are on cellphones, and driving like extra careful drunks, but some are just assholes.
I’m a believer in leaving plenty of room when the traffic is moving, but not when it is a slightly mobile parking lot.
Thank you for that. Part of the problem is that some drivers have a territorial/animal instinct about the space in front of their car. If another driver pulls into that space, it’s like threatening a male baboon with loss of status in his troop. In Freudian terms, it’s like trying to castrate them. They will speed up, tailgate, do anything to keep other people from changing lanes to get in front of them.
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I knew that your username was familiar to me for some reason, but I couldn’t quite recall why. Looks like we have something in common. 
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