Q: As a driver coming from a different state, one of the first things I noticed here is that the cars seem so spread out at stop lights. I was taught to pull up fairly close to the vehicle in front of you to make room for other vehicles on the road. I’ve seen people leave one, two and even three car lengths between their car and the one in front of them. Is this courtesy not taught in driver education around here? The “big space” people block others from getting to a turn lane, block cars from entering the roadway and sometimes use up a good portion of a green light to get through an intersection.
A: Until I read your question, I hadn’t noticed this as a problem. And then, on my next drive, I saw someone leave what looked like three car lengths between themselves and the car in front of them at a traffic light. Had I been overlooking a wide-reaching issue that’s been right in front of me? Probably not. More likely, I just experienced a frequency illusion; when something you just discovered suddenly starts showing up everywhere. While mostly benign, frequency illusions can influence traffic safety, and not in a good way. But that’s a topic for another article.
Getting back to the question, this is a Goldilocks scenario. You brought up the “big space” drivers, but there are also the “too close” drivers. Researchers at Virginia Tech tested distances ranging from 1.25 feet to 50 feet, and found that the time to get vehicles through an intersection remained the same up to 25 feet. (For reference, the average car is about 15 feet long.)They found that the closer together the cars got, the longer each car waited to accelerate after the light turned green. That’s because once you’re moving, you need enough room to keep a safe following distance.
You also wondered if the problem came from our driver training. Blaming driving instructors for the behavior of drivers is like blaming your deity of choice for the behavior of all its followers. I suspected that driver’s ed wasn’t the problem; it’s the drivers who ignore what they were taught or never had driver training before getting their license. I checked with a few driving instructors to see what’s being taught and here’s what they said: Tires on tar. You should stop at a distance from the car in front of you where you can still see where their rear tires touch the pavement. That’s what Mr. Kowalke taught in driving class back when I took it, so the training is consistent. To see how far apart the “tires on tar” approach would put you, I tested it out and found that in my data set of one, it’s 13 feet between bumpers.
Along with Virginia Tech showing that any closer doesn’t help, driving instructors will tell you that leaving more room reduces the odds of “having two collisions in one day” by getting pushed into the car in front of you in a rear-end collision, allows you to see more of the road ahead, and gives you an “escape option” by having enough room to get around the car in front of you without backing up.
I might be guilty of another frequency illusion, but it seems that when drivers leave a big gap at an intersection, drive considerably slower than the rest of traffic or otherwise engage in inconsistent driving behavior, the culprit is often inattention. Driving is a complex task, and it demands our full focus to do it safely.
I’ve found too large of a gap between vehicles when they start to move can trigger the light turning yellow on some of the “smarter” stop signals, resulting in all the cars behind the laggard getting stuck behind a red light. That gap though is often caused by inattention.
Also, I would not discount the Sriver’s Ed teachers theory. Back in the 70s and 80s some drivers around Port Orchard tended to drive really slow on Hwy 16. Thankfully it eventually was expanded to four lanes, reducing the annoyance. I don’t know what else to attribute that behavior to than Drivers Ed. Drivers on the nearby Hwy 3 from Gorst to Belfair didn’t display that behavior. Population differences would have been minimal, but the school district different.
I have never heard of “Tires on Tar” but that is what I teach and practice. Considering that some streets are concrete or gravel or dirt, an even more comprehensive motto is “Rubber on Road.”