Way back in 1970, I was boarding at McDonogh School in Baltimore and I took drivers ed on several spring Saturdays, so I could take to the roads like the rest of American youth and pursue my destiny.
In those days they really stressed keeping the proper distance between you and the car in front. “A car length for every ten miles per hour” was the asphalt rule.
And they even had this goofy machine that simulated the time it took to hit the brake and stop. It had a brake pedal that was connected to a light. When the red light went off you were supposed to hit the brake as fast as you could and the machine registered how long it took you to react. We quickly learned there was always a brief delay in our response time as our eyes registered the light and then our brain told our feet to hit the brake. So, the faster you were traveling, the more distance you would need to account for the hard-wired lag time. Otherwise, you would plow into the back of the car in front if they suddenly stopped.
Okay. So, either the law of physics have changed in the last fifty years, or our response times have gotten way faster, or we simply no longer care about avoiding accidents. It’s no longer possible to maintain the proper distance on a highway because people will constantly cut in between you and the car in front. And it makes you feel like a chump for even trying to be safe.
I was recently driving home on the Capital Beltway, one of the most dangerous roads on earth. It was raining lightly and cars were flying along like they were being pursued by demons. I was going ten miles over the posted speed limit of 55 mph. That meant I should maintain a distance of at least six car lengths behind the car in front of us. And I did.
As we were careening along on the squirrelly turns by the Mormon Temple I had three cars dart as if in synchronous orbit into the space I had allotted. So, I kept having to slow down and back off. It was maddening. It was scary. And it was just another day, rolling the deadly dice.
And then we wonder why there are accidents and endless backups every morning, noon, and night on all our busy highways.