I was taught the same thing in driver’s ed that Lee & Padeye have mentioned (oooh ignore that crappy grammar please!).
Leave enough room so that you can see the tires of the car in front of you.
Makes sense to me and I usually stick to it, unless I notice that I’m blocking a right-turn lane, in which case depending on my mood, the visibility, etc, I will slowly inch up if I have enough room to get out of the way.
If you notice, I said it was men, women, old, young…that day it happened to be a woman. Today leaving work it happened to be a man. If he had pulled up to “see the tires” distance, then the truck towing the trailer that pulled into the turn lane behind him would have cleared the intersection, and we all could have gotten out of the parking lot in that one light cycle.
And chefguy? I’m not claiming any moral authority. Just common sense and courtesy. It took twenty minutes to get through that intersection that day. If the oblivious gap-and-a-halfer would have paid attention and moved up, the people behind us would not have had to sit through an entire light cycle where no one moved. There was virtually no chance of her getting rear-ended when traffic was at a standstill like that.
And padeye? Since you enjoy pissing people off for no particular reason I’m sure sometime in your life you will receive the rewards of that type of attitude. I’m sure for you negative attention is better than no attention at all. If this wasn’t the Pit I would ignore you, but since it will give you so much pleasure (and I’m all for making people happy) grow up, you jerk.
My thing is when these people had a really hard time getting onto this road in the first place, because someone else was doing it. They get all mad, and then…geton the road and do the same thing to the next person.
Grr.
I’m sort of understanding the gappers, being a “see the pavement under the wheels in front of me” kinda gal, but what I’m not getting is the people that stop 30 feet behind the white line at lights. Is there somebody somewhere teaching people to do this, and why? Is there a good reason that the rest of us just don’t know?
(I drive a stick too, Necros, and the same thing happens to me at lights. I’m not clutching on and off throughout the light so that I can creep a couple of inches.)
I understand the common courtesy bit - it bugs me, too, when someone has one and a half or two car lengths in front of them at a busy intersection, yet doesn’t bother to pull up. However, I don’t really get worked up over a half to one car length. Like I said, it’s not really going to get someone home that much faster, and it’s good practice to leave a bit of room. [brief hijack]What does bother me are all those people who have their panties in a wad and pull into the middle of the intersection even though a line of cars has formed all the way back to the stop light behind them when the light turns yellow, even though there isn’t any room, and block all the cars from crossing the road. That drives me batshit. [/brief hijack]
I’m not really thinking about whether one or two people at a particular intersection get home that much faster. There are simply more cars on our roads then they were meant to handle, and it is incumbent upon everyone to drive as efficiently and safely as possible. If half as many cars make it through an intersection as could make it through, that problem is magnified down the line and traffic becomes a snarl. Multiply that by numerous other intersections and the situation becomes even worse. It’s really a lot more complicated than whether or not one person makes it home a half a minute sooner.
I always used to pull right up to within a foot or so of the bumper of the car in front, until about 6 months ago I went on an advanced driving course and the instructor picked me up on it. Now I leave more of a gap, maybe not enough to see the wheels though. Unless it’s on an uphill slope, in which case I try to leave plenty of room for numbnuts ahead with no sense of clutch control who like to roll back a few feet before pulling away :wally
[stickshift hijack]
For that, I thank you. I’m no numbnuts with no sense of clutch control, but it is hard to start up with zero rollback on a steep hill. I don’t need a lot of room, but people six inches from my back bumper make me nervous. I feel like getting out and asking them if it’s okay if I just rest my car against theirs, so there won’t be any crunching when I start off.
Speaking of standards and rollback, I had a funny experience with that. I was creeping in a parking lot, and a woman walked directly behind my car (inches from my back bumper), and it freaked me out because I wouldn’t do that, and didn’t expect anyone else to do that, but then it occurred to me that people who don’t drive a standard wouldn’t expect rollback.
[/stickshift hijack]
Me, too. My brother works in executive protection, and being able to see the back tires of the vehicle in front of you means that you have room to get out from behind them in case of… emergency. Extremely helpful if you are transporting a principle, but also good advice for around town.
And I live in SoCal, one of the worst places around in terms of traffic. So what if one extra person doesn’t make the light? Slow down and relax, you’ll live longer.
PS- if you come up two inches from my bumper, I may not move up at all…
Yes. I knew I was going to be rear ended and had time to take my foot off the brake, check the lane next to me, and start steering into it before the car hit me. I didn’t avoid the accident altogether but I think I was able to mitigate the damage to all parties involved somewhat. After getting hit, my car missed the car in front of me entirely.
Another thing is sometimes you’re just not sure what the car in front of you is going to do, so you want to leave at least enough room to be able to go around.
I’ll make an exception if things are super-tight and traffic’s barely moving anyway.
I generally try to leave a decent gap - how much exactly depends on the weather. Mostly, because my mom’s minivan was once completely totalled when an SUV smashed her between itself and the car in front of her.
The one accident I’ve ever been in as a driver? Rainy night, the jackass behind me decided not to leave enough of a gap. Fucker didn’t even stop to exchange information. :mad:
Okay, I understand why you’d leave a gap between you and the car in front of you. Can you explain this practice? More than once I’ve noticed that the first car in line at a traffic light around here stays a car length behind the white line. Sometimes so far back that they don’t trip the light. This drives me absolutely insane. The person will sit there through two or three cycles of the light before he figures out he’s not close enough to the intersection to trip the light. Does this happen anywhere else, or just in my town?
I, too, am one of Kittenblue’s “idiots”. Ever since my first brand new (Toyota) car became a Pontiac/Toyota/Lincoln sandwich, with my Toyota’s rear and front ends shortened by 2 feet each, and my front end only scratching the Lincoln’s trunk ornament, I leave a car length in front of me when stopped behind a vehicle. Now I commute daily thru the first traffic signal at the end of in 2500 mile interstate highway and have seen dozens of daisy chain rearenders at this and nearby lights involving vehicles stopping too close to each other. They are the true “idiots.” If you rearend someone your front end damage is covered by your insurance with resulting points, rate surcharges, and liability. Most driver ed and defensive driving courses teach leaving a gap.
[QUOTE=kittenblue]
I’ve just about reached the end of my rope with this idiots who feel they have to leave a huge gap between their car and the one in front of them at an intersection! Pull up, jerk! a couple feet is all you need! What is it with these people? It’s not just women, it’s men, it’s young, it’s old…who taught them this stupid practice? Why do they do it? What are they so afraid of?
[quote]
Two different driver’s training instructors taught me this habit. Although I don’t think they stated a car length, or a car length and a half, they used the rule of thumb of “make sure you can see the front car’s rear tires and go no closer than that”.
Why? because when you’re too close to the car in front of you, and yes, a few feet will do it, and someone rear ends you, pushing you into the car in front of you, YOU are liable for the damage to the car in front of you. Leaving more room, leaves a wider safety margin. And duh, of COURSE if someone is going 900 miles an hour, not much will save you from being smashed into the car in front of you, but cops will measure the skid marks and all, and if you were too close to the front car, you can ALSO be cited as at fault. So will the insurance companies.
A lot of us who grow up in snowy states do this as a matter of unconscious habit. Even when it’s not winter, it’s not fear it’s just habit for the 6 months of snowy weather we have to drive in.
What? You think there is some sort of **BING, it’s now summer, no need to maintain safe light idling distance" warning that goes off during the non snowy months?
Besides, what difference does it make? people who aren’t cramped together practically bumper to bumper at lights have more room with which to take off and get going through the light (based on observation, I have NO knowledge in physics and IANA rocket scientist). I mean, even if people are at this turn light in a pattern which YOU consider “acceptable” there will come a point, when a certain amount of people need to turn left where those trying to get into the turn lane will be blocking the left lane. Sounds like a traffic design, not driver issue to me.
I too was taught to “see the wheels touch the ground” when stopping behind another vehicle.
My eyeball estimate of this distance would be 6-8 feet of bumper-to-bumper separation, in most cases. It also easily meets the other oft-mentioned criterion of enabling me to move around the vehicle in front should it stall, for example. This is far less than an entire car length.
In my daily driving I see many vehicles stopped (IMO) too close to the one in front of them. 2-3 feet, for example. I think this is dangerous and stupid as a general practice, but I occasionally do it myself when some situation-specific detail calls for it.
I also see some vehicles stopped (IMO) curiously far back. Everybody seems to have their own standard for this, but anything more than a car length certainly fits mine. Most times, this really doesn’t matter so it’s hardly worthy of pitting.
My point here is that there is a middle ground between 20 feet and 20 inches. Some of the arguments presented in this thread don’t seem to acknowledge this.
It’s the other way round here. People stop so far ahead of the white line that they don’t trip the magnetic sensors in the road. Not only do they have sit and wait because they didn’t stop properly, they’re also in a risk area if there’s an accident. This I just laugh at, but the inch forward practice drives me crazy. What does that extra 6 inches get them? Maybe it’s because I drive a manual, but I refuse to play the crawl forward game.