Wrong! You just ease off the gas until you’ve a 2 second gap again. The “2 second rule” doesn’t mean you have to react within a nano-second of the space being taken up, that’s just bad driving.

Spot on.

I’ve had the luxury of adaptive cruise control for a while now. It leaves a sensible ‘1 second, 2 second’ gap between me & the car in front. This incenses some drivers who tailgate me in the outside lane. Sure, I could get much closer to the car in front. But after accelerating up to it I’ll then return to my previous speed. And I’ll still be overtaking the traffic in the inside lane.

I have had a couple of incidents where I’ve opted to stay in the outside lane anticipating overtaking another car only to find the tailgater accelerate and undertake in the short gap. They nip in in front and my car just increases the gap. no problem. I stay calm, they remain peculiar.

If I get tailgated, I just double the gap between me and the car in front. Because I’m having to do the thinking and braking for both of us. It’s actually quite calming to cruise at the speed limit while the person behind works themselves towards apoplexy.

I don’t hold folk up on DCs and MWs, I’d rather have the idiots past me and away bothering other people.

Wrong! You just ease off the gas until you’ve a 2 second gap again.

Absolutely – I didn’t mean slam on in a full emergency stop. Ease off is fine. Though I will sometimes touch the brakes just so that the other gammon sitting 2 inches from my boot gets a visual warning that I am slowing down. (If he was at a reasonable stopping distance this wouldn’t be a concern).

if someone moves into that gap ( which altho I don’t drive a lot I find very rare)

*blink blink*… “rare”????

Very very common in my experience.

If you leave a 2 second gap on the motorway (i.e. 205ft / 62.5m at 70mph) then someone will overtake and pull back into it.

If you leave a 2 second gap in town (88ft / 26.8m  at 30mph) then someone will make a dirty dive out a side road into the gap.

I regularly see drivers, usually in those tiny little pretend cars, tailgating camper vans. It’s utter madness how close they get!

I once saw a car which I honestly thought was being towed in that manner. It turned out that no, he was just driving really very close to the lorry in front. I kid you not – as I passed him I noticed he was also shaving.

I drove across France a couple of weeks ago.  Almost everyone in the right hand lane (other side of the road so equivalent to our left hand lane) unless actually overtaking.  Overtaking and there’s another car a couple of hundreds ahead that’ll be overtaking shortly?   Pull in, catch up, indicate and pull out.  Someone traveling at 80 overtaking a car doing 79.5?  No problem, slow down, wait and overtake when they pull in.  Apart from 2 cases of in the “fast lane” and staying there and one of flashing headlights because “I’m going soooooo fast” – all 3 with UK plates

Overtaking and there’s another car a couple of hundreds ahead that’ll be overtaking shortly?   Pull in, catch up, indicate and pull out.

See here’s a thing: if we are all diligently observing the 2 second rule then (at 70mph) you should be 62.5 meters ahead of the car you are overtaking before you pull in (so you don’t pull into their safe gap) and you should pull out 62.5 meters before you start to overtake the next car.

So that means if you need a 125 meter gap or more to pull in.

So I just stay in the middle lane 😉

I drove across France a couple of weeks ago.  Almost everyone in the right hand lane (other side of the road so equivalent to our left hand lane) unless actually overtaking.  Overtaking and there’s another car a couple of hundreds ahead that’ll be overtaking shortly?   Pull in, catch up, indicate and pull out.  Someone traveling at 80 overtaking a car doing 79.5?  No problem, slow down, wait and overtake when they pull in.

It amazes me that the two are not connected in many people’s heads and that people are quite willing to follow one rule and completely disregard another.  Motorway’s are spectacularly bad for this in the UK.

French motorway’s are infinitely better in most aspects … yet the same people driving through a major town/city (you must presume) often drive much worse?

The UK’s disconnect seems to be motorway lane discipline and minimum gaps… whereas the French seems to be that they don’t/won’t apply the same to semi-urban and urban driving as autoroutes?

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</p><p>Its a limit, not a target.</p><p>HTHs

</p><p></p><p>True.</p><p></p><p>But the behaviour you describe would fail a driving test.</p><p></p><p>HTH</p>

No it wouldn’t. However tailgating would.

HTHs

Not driving at the limit will fail  a driving test ? Urban Myth .

My  friend is a driving instructer and he reckons as long as you are driving at 3/4 of the posted  speed limit thats more than enough to not get a fail for failure to make  progress, or some other non truth speeders preach.

The speed LIMIT also does not take into account the weather ( I wasnt speeding when I hit the black ice and skiided into the lolliplop lady and 4 schoolkids your honor , i was doing 30mph)

The speed LIMIT does not take into account traffic conditions. – parked cars,  horses, bicycles, school kids , mums with push chairs , Time  of day etc . You smash on if you want , I’ll just knock a few mph off and give myself a second more too react to the road hazards .

Where did I say don’t drive to the conditions?

If the conditions are good can you give me one decent reason why you wouldn’t drive to within a few mph of the limit?

Not driving at the limit will fail  a driving test ? Urban Myth .

My  friend is a driving instructer and he reckons as long as you are driving at 3/4 of the posted  speed limit thats more than enough to not get a fail for failure to make  progress, or some other non truth speeders preach.

I failed my first driving test for this. I argued my point and he said that 25 was inappropriate in a 30 limit with no reason not to drive at 30.

(Fail notes said hesitancy and not driving at an appropriate speed for the road conditions)

Thats not not an urban myth, or second hand information. I was there. It happened on Fifth Avenue in York on the way back to where the old Test Centre used to be. After a totally clean driving test with no other issues.

And it’s not a “non truth that speeders preach” in any way.

mainly because it’s totally true, and secondly because I’m not a speeder, or an advocate of it  (I drive at 60 on motorways generally, in lane 1 with the lorries !)

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Thing is there’s a difference between staying in the middle/outside lane to overtake sensibly, and just being a lazy/ignorant/self righteous bastard and sitting there in the middle (or outside) lane and causing slower drivers to have to overtake and so causing more traffic to go over to the outside lane and then … tailgating happens (of course some people just drive like bumholes anyway).

Just like on the trails, let the faster riders through and everyone is happy… right?

I also failed my first driving test for doing 30 in a 40 and “Not maintaining the flow of traffic”.

I failed my first driving test for this. I argued my point and he said that 25 was inappropriate in a 30 limit with no reason not to drive at 30.

I recently got stuck behind someone who drove for several miles doing an indicated 30-35 mph on a road with a 60 limit, which in reality means they were doing roughly 27-30 mph; the weather was fine and dry, there is absolutely no reason a driver can’t maintain a steady speed around the actual limit, ie 55+ mph, to drive slower is just being wilfully obstructive. It was impossible to overtake due to visibility and steady oncoming traffic, and it was incredibly frustrating.

my driving instructor used to make me boot it down two particular stretches of NSL road because he’d had pupils fail their tests for not going fast enough on them. I didn’t feel comfortable at all.  One of them has since been regraded to 40, the other I have never driven down as fast since my test as I did on my lessons!

countzero – what if it had been a tractor or a chaingang of cyclists?

They can automate it. There are bridge cameras that can detect license plates and distance between cars at speed.

Once they have cameras for detecting phone use when driving and automatic bans I will be happier