Quote:
Originally Posted by sendler
22 years. 80 miles per day. 23,000 per year. 80% highway. Same commute. What's not to believe?
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That you drafted semis with 1 second reaction time for 300k miles and had no incidents. Your claim is rhetorical at best.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sendler
Big city freeway traffic considers 30 feet at 75mph to be normal. 30-40 meters behind a tractor trailer is not really as unnatural as it sounds on paper. If traffic volume is packing both lanes, this distance seems quite normal at that point and impatient drivers will be diving into any gap bigger than that so why not continue to do it when the road is clear. Very safe. Much safer than leading out the open road on your own. Anything bad that can happen such as an animal running out into the road, will happen to him. How long is a semi rig? you are actually 80 meters behind the driver. If he sees something and reacts it is as if you are following a car at 80 meters. And, truckers can see much better than cars in bad weather. This another reason to adopt one as blocker/ guardian angle. Your own lights are also amplified in bad weather as they bounce off of the back of the truck to light up the scene in front of you like day. I only half jokingly envision the day when the energy police will give you a ticket for not drafting. "Hey! What's wrong with you. Get up there and fill in that gap before I give you a ticket".
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Traffic volume is irrelevant and not an excuse to follow at an unsafe distance. Timing your following distance to 2 seconds minimum is a good rule of thumb, and is safe for an alert driver. Then it does not matter whether the semi brakes or drops a load, you have time to stop or avoid. Following closer than 2 seconds is dangerous, and is often cited the root cause of pileups. Joke all you want, drafting is far less safe than not.