Nothing makes me more nervous than people who tailgate, and in North Carolina where I live, it seems that this is all that people do! The other day, my boyfriend and I were joking about how horrible the drivers are in the region of North Carolina that we live in. The main source of this driving is tailgating. For instance, just the other day, we were driving somewhere during rush hour when we couldn t help but notice that there was a line of drivers in the left lane beside us all tailgating each other. Now, what do I mean by tailgating in this sense? When talking about tailgating, tailgating is when you do not leave a safe enough stopping distance between you and the vehicle in front of you. When you are driving, you should have at least two car lengths between you and the next car. Another way to look at it is that you should always be able to see the entire rear bumper of the vehicle in front of you. If you are looking at just their back window, then you are way too close.
I have witnessed several accidents take place due to tailgating. In one case, a person slowed down for a red light, but because the person behind them was too close, they couldn t react to slow down in enough time and wound up striking the person in front of them. For many people who tailgate, they do so because they feel that by following a person closely, it will send a message to that particular person that they either need to speed things up or get out of the way. This is not the case, and the person who is driving in front of such a person doesn t have to slow down or speed up (at least if they are in a residential area.
Often times, the worst tailgating takes place not on the local roads, but on the highways. This is not only incredibly dangerous, but it can be deadly for you and others around you. When I was a police officer, I responded to a report of a five car pileup on one of the major thoroughfares in the Raleigh, North Carolina area. When I arrived on scene, no one was injured just annoyed. Apparently, the car in front of the line of other vehicles had slowed down due to heavy traffic conditions. However, the person directly behind them wasn t paying attention and had to suddenly slam on his brakes. And because the people behind him had been following each other too closely, they all wound up hitting each other like a domino effect. The person in front of all of this mess was not to blame. He was simply reacting to traffic conditions in the area. However, the rest of the group all received tickets in addition to their accident reports because had they allowed enough space in between themselves and the drivers in front of them, the entire accident could have been avoided.
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