People have given good advice.
Here's what we taught:
1) First, recognize high-risk rear crash scenarios so you can either (a) stay away from them, (b) take steps to minimize the risk, things like: looking
well ahead in traffic to spot & anticipate slowdowns & "unexpected" stops; leaving
more space ahead of you when you've got a tailgaiter; leave more following distance behind vehicles that block your forward vision.
2) When coming into a stop,
control following traffic by braking early and slowing gradually (good ecodriving technique too).
3) Extra communication with following drivers: when warranted, repeatedly flash your brake lights, or turn on your 4-ways - I always do this on the freeway when I spot a significant slowdown ahead. This applies when stopping or already stopped.
(Some Mercedes cars automatically activate a special high-intensity - possibly flashing, I'm not sure - brake lights when the driver brakes harder than usual.)
4) Plan your escape route in case the car behind isn't going to stop; always leave enough space ahead of you to be able to aggressively accelerate into your escape route
5) If you have no available escape route to the side, leave extra space ahead. The curriculum I taught suggested stopping with 4-5 car lengths ahead in city driving if nobody has yet stopped behind you, then creeping forward as cars arrive.
Quote:
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As for leaving multiple car lengths between cars when you're in a turn lane, think about what happens if everyone does that.
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Yeah, but everybody's
not going to do that. So you can.
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I've never been rear-ended, and I've definitely avoided one rear crash so far:
Was on the freeway coming into a construction zone where 2 lanes were merged into one. I saw my (passing) lane ending ahead, so I accelerated to pass a tractor trailer before the merge.
Guess what traffic was doing not far past where the lanes merged. Yup, stopped.
I made the pass with room to spare, but then had to jump on the brakes because I mostly failed to do #1, #2 and #3.
Also, I'd concede (not to a lawyer!
) that my pass may have "caused" the situation (despite the law saying the following driver is at fault in a rear crash). My mistake was putting all my own attention on making the passing manoever, and probably drawing the transport driver's attention to me while doing it. Instead, we both needed to be looking well down the road, past the merge.
So in my mirror, I saw smoke billowing from some of the locked tires on the transport coming up behind me. Lucky for me, I had an escape route and I accelerated onto the gravel shoulder and started passing stopped cars. I remember at least one of them followed me along the shoulder and waved "thanks" after. The truck stopped in the vacated space without hitting anyone.
Nothing will save us from 100% of idiots. And I don't claim to do all these things even close to 100% of the time (which you'd need to, to be 100% defensive). But they definitely help.