if you think about the speeds involved, a single additional car in front of you on the freeway (or even any additional cars) adds pretty miniscule time to the total commute.
Let's compare a few situations. In the baseline you're tailing the car in front of you with a focus on not letting anyone cheat and get in front of you, let's say 50 feet away. Your commute is 30 miles, and in this frictionless sphere of traffic you're going 60mph the whole time. You get to work in 30 minutes flat.
In the second scenario you're following the 3-second rule[0]. This would put you ~285 feet behind the car in front of you. Let's say over the course of your commute 20 cars move in front of you. If the average car length is 15 feet, and they all are 50 feet away from each other, when all 20 cars are in place you're a net -(20 * 65) feet away from the original car, or 1300 feet total. At 60 mph that adds ~15 seconds to your total commute time.
Well worth having an easier time avoiding a potential crash IMO! Also has the benefit of helping prevent traffic to begin with[1]
It is not about efficiency or trying not to be slow. I am not bothered how many people cut in line or "cheat".[1]
Someone will always keep cutting into the space. It is impossible to maintain 3 second to the car ahead. First one car will cut in, you make room for them and add 3 second gap the next car will cut in. Maintaining even a 1 second gap is sometimes very hard close to exits.
[1] Personally my driving pattern changed once I switched to driving a hydrogen fuel cell Mirai, slower is better on the mileage and fuel cell owners are very range conscious.
In the Midwest here and drive the same way, from rural to busy city and back. Never had any issues at all with it minus the car or five I let in front of me. I usually keep about 5 car lengths, so a fairly reasonable gap without being annoying to drivers that happen to be behind me. Also, I have zero panic braking incidents, which seem to be a big cause of crashes and slowdowns in heavy traffic due to the slinky phenomenon that tends to happen.
Not only can I see everything beyond the car in front of me, I tend to "soak" up the braking energy when there is a panic braking incident in front of me. I have no data to back this up, but I'm almost positive I've kept traffic moving much better behind me and prevented rear ending incidents using this tactic. Also, I wouldn't downplay the amount of fuel that is being saved that comes with not having to almost stop, then start over again from the slinky effect.
Tell me you're a bad driver without telling me you're a bad driver.
You need to not care about that, and you're actually supposed to let people change lanes into your lane. You're getting into a mental competition with other drivers and sacrificing the safety of yourself and everyone around you.
And if anyone believes that longer following distance causes more traffic, that is also false and the reverse is actually true. It is the poor reaction times of tailgaters that cause traffic slowdowns.
> Tell me you're a bad driver without telling me you're a bad driver.
> You need to not care about that, and you're actually supposed to let people change lanes into your lane. You're getting into a mental competition with other drivers and sacrificing the safety of yourself and everyone around you.
> And if anyone believes that longer following distance causes more traffic, that is also false and the reverse is actually true. It is the poor reaction times of tailgaters that cause traffic slowdowns.
I think that what they're saying is the flow of cars in front of them keeps that distance between them and the 'next car' to a shorter undesirable distance as more cars fill that gap during traffic.
... And then you end up just going slower than the rest of the traffic, and people behind you change to the faster lanes to pass you, and some of the people passing you change lanes back to in front of you. And so trying to keep a longer following distance than the rest of traffic allows just means thtey lots of people are doing things other than just staying safely in one lane.
you're better off letting people change lanes to the lane they want to be in, and if you're not camping in the left lane then typically you'll find people changing lanes from the left lane to exit, or will change lanes through yours into the left lane.
if you leave lots of space they can do so entirely safely.
trying to prevent other people from changing lanes does not enhance traffic safety.
then you let off the gas slightly and widen the gap. when people change lanes from in front of you, then you can speed up slightly and close the gap. that isn't a practical problem. it comes out in the wash.
It doesn't stop with one, the problem is not someone cut across, the problem is someone always keeps squeezing in the gap. Every time you open a gap, a new car cuts across. How can you maintain any gap in that context ?
As others pointed out - let them. On average all lanes move the same, they might even move away once the lane stops moving. You'll have much worse time rearing a car then letting all those cars in.
I also keep additional distance in traffic to minimize slowdowns/stops, which ultimately actually improves/fixes the flow.
