Tailgating Kills. Are You a Killer?

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.

Our New Contributor: Shannon Noel Webb

Fix The Toaster is very excited to now have LA based mom, Shannon Noel Webb, contributing to our site. Shannon is naturally funny but she's serious about the impact of car safety. Well the people behind the cars, the whole sha-bang. Here is her first post.

Here is a list of the things I did this morning while driving in my car to work.  I cannot even believe it.  After talking last night and being uber aware I was still doing these things!  Habits run deep.  I like Fix The Toaster.  It is time to break our habits.  Jesus - look at this list!  I'm embarrassed, horrified and feeling fucking luck all in one!  I'm a good driver, a good mom, more responsible and ocd than I like to admit, I know people who have lost loved ones in car accidents, I bit my own tongue off in a car accident when I was 16,  I have been in a car accident where the car was flipped and totaled, and yet I STILL did the following WHILE driving myself to work this morning:

1. Read the liner notes on a 1987 Tom Waits cassette tape
2. Cleaned my cell phone headphones with a blanket that I dug out from under the seat and then sprayed with hand sanitizer
3. Loved on my dog who had found his way from the back of the mini van to the front seat
4. Fixed my twisted seat belt that was stuck in the contraption that is meant to make it tight should I be distracted and wreck
5. Searched for, found and turned on the seat warmer
6. Dug through my work bag for my cell phone charger and then searched for the outlet in 5 different compartments
7. Reached behind me to the back seat window and detached the built in sun shade so that my dog could stick his head out of the open window
8. Typed a note into my iPhone calendar and then set the alarm to remind me of this note later
9. Googled, on my iPhone, the address of my dog's groomer, google mapped it and then programmed it to guide me there from my current location
10. Ate and apple
11. Fought with the sports bottled top of my Sigg
12. Changed the radio station at least 3 times
13. Searched for and found the button on the radio that adjusts the bass.  Adjusted the bass.  Then the fade. Then the treble.
14. De tangled my new, gorgeous and very long necklace from my seatbelt
15. Dug through my wallet to find my hidden nail file/cleaner and then cleaned out my thumb nail
16. Checked to make sure that neither of my kids was hiding in the back of the car. They were not.  THANK GOD!

My only excuse is that I am not used to driving my min-van to work so it was somewhat new for me.  This would never suffice if, God forbid, I had hurt someone this morning.  And my children would certainly not have accepted this excuse if I had hurt myself, their Mommy.

6,484 People Die in LA Every Year in Car Crashes

Living in Los Angeles I am faced with driving around millions of people daily. I have seen far more accidents then I ever did living anywhere else. It is a part of our daily lives here.

After driving by the accident on the 134 West last night I couldn't help but think of the people in those cars, their soft flesh possibly hurt. Their spirits possibly gone.

Because their fragile bodies could not handle the impact of going, say 70MPH to 0 in a second.

I just looked up how many people die in LA  each year.  6,484 people die in Los Angeles every year in due to car crashes. That is a lot of people.

You argue, yes but there are a lot of people living in Los Angeles. True, but should we just sit back and take it that, that's a given? Car crashes are not cancer. We don't need to do a ton of research going after then unknown. Sometimes I feel like we are just a bunch of fatalists regarding car crashes.

There are some answers.

There are ways to help lower the amount of deaths. But are we willing to sacrifice 15 minutes here or there? Will the car companies let new advances that are available now happen?

Check out how many people die in your city here.