LOL
You know, surprisingly there are very few accidents due to the packed cars. When we were taught to drive they told us one car length for every ten miles per hour, OR ELSE.
The or else is very few accidents in reality.
If you consider the numbers of cars and the numbers of accidents, we’re talking a very small number of accidents percentage wise.
What they never figured out, is that the car in front of you can’t stop on a dime. When it starts to slow down, you start to slow down too. Generally the guy behind can react in time to avoid impact. If you’re watching traffic ahead, which you have to do in heavy freeway traffic, you see the slowing ahead and account for it.
One of my pet peeves is the guy that breaks hard with a big gap in front of him. You’re watching traffic ahead, and this person is standing on the brake like he’s inches for an impact. It’s hard to avoid folks like that.
There are many things I dislike... People driving in the left lane at the speed limit or lower when there is room to the right. People who don’t drive all the way to the merge point before merging, and worse people who get MAD at people for driving all the way to a merge point before merging. People who brake when they have plenty of space in front of them. Large vehicles I can’t see through to view the traffic in front of them (OK, for this I simply move over until there’s a smaller car I can follow).
I watched an accident a week ago caused because a car in the left lane decided to merge into a tiny space on the right, while moving 20 mph slower. It was just like the car could “stop on a dime”, and caused the requisite damage, not to the car it cut off who managed to stop, but the idiot who was ALSO in the left lane, driving 20 miles per hour FASTER than the really slow car, who ALSO decided to dive into the next lane, right BEHIND the car.
But yes, while we have a lot of accidents in our area, it is few relative to the number of cars. And watching how many idiots are driving, and how badly they do so, I’m constantly amazed the entire highway system isn’t one big pile of broken cars.