what about when there's an idiot slightly ahead and in the next lane who decides to randomly swerve into my lane?
do you also maintain a long following distance when there's a car right next to you in the next lane? I try to, because I don't want to stay in someone's blind spot, but sometimes it's not really possible to fall back.
I watch a lot of car accident videos and I've seen that happen exactly once.
Perhaps you mean the far more common scenario when the car in the next lane simply decides to merge into yours? Nothing about that is random[1] and the response in 90%+ of cases is just to let off the gas for a few seconds. That's it.
[1]: In most cases, it's because your lane is open and theirs is about to be backed up. You'd want to switch lanes too, so it really shouldn't be surprising they do.
The rest are mostly people realizing at the last second they want to turn right/left at an upcoming intersection (or highway exit). Again, predictable.
Because all the "person doesn't look, pulls out into road, other traffic swerves around them" don't cause crashes and don't get posted to your accident feed.
I watch accident videos, not crash videos. Pulling out/switching lanes while not looking is like 40% of the clips in the videos. It's a common, predictable driving scenario, nothing to get one's panties in a bunch about.
do you also maintain a long following distance when there's a car right next to you in the next lane? I try to, because I don't want to stay in someone's blind spot, but sometimes it's not really possible to fall back.