Safety Tidbit 3.39 - Safe Following Distances

Safety Tidbit 3.39 – Following Distances

Reference:        Travelers Insurance – Safe Following Distances

I was driving to North Carolina with my wife and the trip was miserable. The traffic was crazy, and we noticed so many auto accidents that continually brought the traffic to a standstill. But even when there wasn’t an accident (which was about every 30 miles in Virginia), the traffic had an ebb and flow that caused you to have to slow to a crawl unexpectedly. We determined the main culprit for the ebb and flow of traffic was due to trucks passing other trucks and taking quite a bit of time to get around their comrade. In Virginia, on I-81 there are only two lanes in each direction. Therefore, when a truck pulls out they are blocking everyone. 

The accidents were caused from several compounding issues. First, the sheer volume of vehicles, second, a sudden drop in speed due to passing vehicles, third, it was raining and periodically extremely hard, fourth, just being too close to the car in front of you. There are a few other compounding issues such as grip of tires on vehicles, individual drive abilities, service of vehicles, the vision of drivers, and so on. The one we noticed most from our car was that everyone seemed to be right on the bumper of the car they were following. When I left room between me and car in front of me, another driver seemed to want to slide in.

Travelers Insurance has a nice website for safe following distances. They reference a National Highway Transportation survey that showed rear-end collisions are the most common automobile incident. Most of us are aware of the 3-second rule for safe following distances. Where you pick a fixed object and once the car in front of you passes the object you count (1-1000, 2-1000, 3-1000) and you should just have passed the object yourself. Unfortunately, that is not always possible or given my circumstances, more distance was needed due to weather and road conditions. 

Drivers need to heed the 3-second rule and slow down when the weather is less than ideal. Also, distractions need to be minimized. Please do not text while driving or as one guy looked to be doing, reading a book! 
We made it safe and sound. I had just replaced my tires the week before, my eyewear prescription is fairly new and I had no distractions. However, I can tell you, I was glad when the trip was over. Hopefully when we drive home the weather will be nicer and I can enjoy the scenery. Please be safe while driving. It’s getting to be that time of year when we go on vacations or weekend campouts. Ensure you and your car are ready, fit, and able.

Hope this was helpful and thank you for reading my Safety Tidbits! Comments and questions are always welcome. ~ Bryan

P.S. If you have an interesting safety or health question please let me know.