Dehydration and Tailgating - a nasty mixture

Since I recently wrote about dehydration and driving, I thought I might as well include this one now too. I cannot put fault on all the local drivers. I have driven with a moron I work with (not a local) who defended her driving by saying ' look, there is one car length between me and the car in front of me'.  She was driving on a highway at 110 kph.  Idiot.

There are guidelines for following a car and those guidelines change according to the speed everyone is going. I am convinced that there is no driver education here, or if any, minimal. One of my new friends told me she took driver education and explained why everyone leaves their right signal light on.  I dont buy the reason - it makes no sense. She said that if you are in the slow lane and you dont want someone to pass you - leave your right signal light on. Sure.  That will stop the speed freaks!  All it does is give those following - no idea what you plan to do. In the real world, it indicates you are going to change lanes - into the fast lane.  Or turn right.  The reality here is that someone has turned on the right signal light and forgot to turn it off.

If you cannot figure this out - what it means is - if you are driving 55 mph (which is 90kph) then you need to allow 288 FEET between you and the car in front of you. WHY? Because if you don't and someone needs to stop quickly, you dont have a snowball's chance in hell to stop if you do not leave that much of a gap. HERE, the gap is less than a car length. Here, people like to see what the message is that the driver in front is texting to their friend - while driving.

Add all that to dehydration, and we have a recipe for collisions all over the place.

I hope that someone here is reading this chart and understanding that leaving a gap between cars is a safe way for everyone to share the highway.  The good and marginal indicated on the chart indicate driving conditions - rain, monsoons, fog, smog etc. are considered marginal.

Three-Second Rule		Safe Interval Should Be >	3 seconds	6 seconds
Speed	Distance Traveled	For These Conditions >	Good	Marginal
25 m.p.h.	37 ft. per second		111 ft.	222 ft.
35 m.p.h.	52 ft. per second		166 ft.	312 ft.
45 m.p.h.	66 ft. per second		198 ft.	396 ft.
55 m.p.h.	81 ft. per second		243ft.	486 ft.
65 m.p.h.	96 ft. per second		288 ft.	576 ft.
75 m.p.h.	111 ft. per second		333 ft.	666 ft.
			Safe Following Distance in Feet

If you have no idea what the 3 second rule means:

The 3-second rule

Watch the vehicle in front of you pass an object and then count the time (one thousand one, one thousand two and one thousand three) it takes for you to reach that object. If you’re closer than 3 seconds, then back off slightly to reach a three-second following distance.

If you’re traveling at speeds over 30 mph (48 kph), in heavy traffic, bad weather, or following a motorcycle, truck or bus, try to maintain a following distance of 4 seconds or more.  
You can do this when passing a massive pothole in the road - count the 3 seconds after you watch the dufus in front of you bounce around before you get to bounce around in the same pothole.  Swerving to the right lane is not a good choice, especially if you don't check for cars there first.