According to Wikipedia: Approximately one third of rear-end collisions involve tailgating.
I live in a place that requires me to go down a huge hill, basically a mountain. It's a freeway and it's surprisingly uncongested for LA.
I have to stay in the right hand lane as the freeway I need requires one to exit on that side.
This leads a bunch of people in the right hand lane, the slow lane, all going down a mountain on a freeway. Fast.
I am comfortable going between 60-65. I'm pretty sure the speed limit is 65.
You would not know it from the cars whizzing by me. Fine let them whiz. I can't control them. But what really rattles me is when someone gets behind me and tails me on this freeway. I become stuck.
I need to exit so I need to stay in that lane. They say the safest thing to do is you are being tailed is to let the person pass you. But it would be unsafe for me to get over and then get back over again.
I believe that if you are tailgating you are saying F#$% you to the lives in front of you. Because if an incident occurs where the car in front of you has to stop, you will, 100% hit them. And if you are going down a freeway, downhill, at 70 miles per hour you will really hurt the lives in front of you and possibly many more from the sadness they would feel at the loss of life.
I think even the tailgater would probably suffer huge remorse from killing someone.
Remember the 3 second rule from drivers ed? Why aren't we adhering to it? My cousin was in a crash here on the LA freeways this year and she said it was incredibly frightening seeing all of the cars scramble to stop.
Since I have to go on this freeway a lot I've wanted to place a bumper sticker on my car, much to my husband's horror. I bought one that says:
Tailgating Kills, Please Leave Space
I like this one someone home made.
I haven't had the cajones to put it on my car but I think I might start making my own revolving bumper stickers. I want people to really get where I'm coming from.
Do you tailgate? Is it a problem in your area?
The faster we go the longer it takes to stop.
I don't want to crash at 70 MPH, do you? Have you ever been hit at 20MPH and said, "Wow, that hurt?" Imagine crashing at 50, 60? Imagine your kids crashing at that speed.
Don't we want to stop in time?
Do you value life enough to leave space? Daily I feel as if I'm surrounded by heartless, angry people on the roads, but I believe they just have not connected the dots yet. Or we as a society have forgotten the very basics.