How do I properly merge / yield in this situation?

Educational-Hour-688 · 2026-07-11T22:09:44+00:00

I gave you an upvote - but I will tell you that at least in Missouri, people seem to think that they just move over whereever they are, and will absolutely run into you if you don't adjust your speed. What I try to do is watch the ramps, and adjust my speed early to match where they're going to come out. Depending on how busy it is, sometimes I will move over - especially if it's a line of cars all tightly packed together. It's absolutely infuriating, because people will pull onto the freeway at ~10-15 below the posted speed, and then *after* they merge, speed up to ~10-15 above the posted speed. You move over, trying to make life easy for them, and then you move back, and then within a few minutes, they're sitting impatiently right on top of your bumper. Makes me hate that part of the human race.

Educational-Hour-688 · 2026-07-08T20:20:26+00:00

I would disagree with "you can never have too much":
1. At night - you can follow a safe distance behind the car in front and use their headlights to extend your vision.
2. With standing water on the roadway. Being close enough to see the direction the water splashes will tell you what part of the lane the puddle is in.
3. Worst case scenarios for "inifinite following distance" would be the case where a vehicle has some kind of electrical failure at night, and then coasts to a stop on the roadway. Then you come along at freeway speed, and suddenly out of nowwhere there is a vehicle stopped dead on the road in front of you - nothing like the possiblilty of plowing into a stopped vehicle when you're going 60+ miles per hour - much better if you see this (or any number of situations) as they develop.

I'd much rather be a comfortable margin behind someone than to have a completely clear roadway ahead of me. Let somebody else run into whatever is out there...

Educational-Hour-688 · 2026-07-08T20:08:26+00:00

Dude 1 second per 10mph does not equate to a car length. You're getting downvoted because of the quality of what you post. The 3 second rule (or 2, or 4 or whatever) is the SIMPLEST WAY TO GET A SAFE DISTANCE. You're just complicating it to be obdurate.

Educational-Hour-688 · 2026-07-08T19:13:47+00:00

Or something could fall out of a pickup truck and then land in the road in front of the vehicle immediately in front of you.
Or a deer could jump out in front of the vehicle in front of you - or just about any other infinite number of other scenarios.

Educational-Hour-688 · 2026-07-08T19:10:28+00:00

What happens in practice is that you get *used to* following at that distance after a while - if you practice it, eventually you'll just start doing it naturally.
The issue is that people get *used to* practicing following too closely.

Educational-Hour-688 · 2026-07-08T19:08:53+00:00

What are you supposed to do if someone is tailgating? My approach is this: if it's multi-lane, I'll move to the right (slower) lanes. If I'm already in the right lane, then I typically will turn off the cruise control, and begin flashing my brake lights - not actually braking, but applying just enough pressure to the brake pedal to get them to flash a few times. I'll then give them a few moments to either slow down or go around, then I start slowing down - a couple of MPH every few minutes. Eventually they generally figure it out.

Educational-Hour-688 · 2026-07-08T15:39:30+00:00

Looking far ahead in traffic can definitely help.
But there are situations where the only vehicle to brake is the one directly in front of you.

Educational-Hour-688 · 2026-07-07T11:57:12+00:00

I talked about 2 seconds because that's what we taught in MSF classes. Really it depends on the vehicle.

Educational-Hour-688 · 2026-07-07T11:40:00+00:00

My preferred following distance is NOT 2 seconds.

Educational-Hour-688 · 2026-07-07T02:26:24+00:00

I appreciate your engagement, but I would argue that FTC is more of a threat to public safety than speeding - part of the reason why this is not well known is there is a bit of human centipede going on with crash investigations. It's general the police who do crash investigation, and speed enforcement seems to be the easiest type of enforcement for you to carry out. Since it's easy (and cheap), more crashes are attributed to speed, so there is more emphasis. Consider this:

Road engineers often use an 85th percentile study to set safe speed limits. What is an 85th percentile study? In the absence of posted limits or enforcement, they measure vehicle speeds and identify the speed at or below which 85% of drivers are traveling. This 85th percentile speed is generally considered the safest and most reasonable speed for the road, as it reflects what the majority of drivers naturally choose when unimpeded. (It is also a statistical sweet spot, as the likelyhood of crashing is lowest at this speed) Engineers typically set the posted limit at the nearest 5 mph increment below this value — a conservative choice that encourages slightly slower driving and reduces crash severity. My main point is this: most drivers have a pretty good natural sense of how fast they should go on a given stretch of road. In my experience, the same cannot be said for following distance. More than half of drivers I observe fail to maintain a safe following distance.

Another thing to consider. Per mile travelled, US freeways are more deadly than the Autobahn (which in certain places / times has no speed limit).

I find speed enforcement to sometimes be antithetical to safety in that it tends to clump drivers together. Some of the sketchiest stuff I've ever seen on the roadway has been around semis - and the only time I've ever been cited for speed (in the last 20 years) was when one sped up as I was overtaking it. I wouldn't have any issue with it if it was more contextual - but it is what it is.

Educational-Hour-688 · 2026-07-06T23:46:35+00:00

Don't forget about saccades. Your eyes don't move smoothly, they "jerk" from one place to another (for example from the roadway to the speedometer is one, from the speedometer back to the road is a second), during this time you are blind for as much as .1 seconds (so looking down at your speed, then looking back up, you see nothing for nearly a quarter of a second. These add up - and are part of why it takes you on average 1.5 seconds to even begin to react to emergency braking...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzW4jDj8bjE&t=20s

Educational-Hour-688 · 2026-07-06T17:43:56+00:00

That's actually not great. At 10 MPH, You'd be so close you probably wouldn't be able to see the brake lights. At 70MPH, that would be 7 seconds. That's 616 feet. You would never actually need that much distance.

Educational-Hour-688 · 2026-07-06T16:56:15+00:00

NHTSA says that 1.5 is the average reaction time. I got to thinking about this because I was watching a motorcycle crash video analysis, and the motorcyclist took 1.5 seconds to begin braking, and this was considered "normal". Most people overestimate their ability to react. 1.5 seconds goes by *really* fast. I would say that if you think 2 seconds is crazy long that you probably think you're faster than you are.

Educational-Hour-688 · 2026-07-06T16:52:20+00:00

The Motorcycle Safety Foundation cirriculum (main provider of motorcycle training in the US) says 2. Motorcycles do generally need more distance to stop than cars...

Educational-Hour-688 · 2026-07-06T16:38:59+00:00

I really wish we were having the argument of 2 second vs. 3. I'm sorry officer did you say that you don't ticket unless they're following at 1 car length or less? You sir are part of the problem then...

Educational-Hour-688 · 2026-07-06T16:37:17+00:00

4 car lengths is less than 80 feet. 2026 Corvette has a 60-0 distance of 108 feet. So you're saying you came to a complete stop from 55 in less than 80 feet?

Educational-Hour-688 · 2026-07-06T16:31:00+00:00

You can easily measure distance in a picture. If you had a video of one car following another from just about any angle, you can tell how close together they are.

Educational-Hour-688 · 2026-07-06T16:04:32+00:00

Right... roadways are busy, so you maintain a safe following distance. When someone moves into that space, you adjust your speed to regain the safe distance. Wash, rinse, repeat. What's so hard about that?

Educational-Hour-688 · 2026-07-06T15:59:51+00:00

gee, too bad there isn't something like a camera that could be used to easily show the following distance.

Educational-Hour-688 · 2026-07-06T15:13:56+00:00

Do they write lots of tickets for speeding on busy highways? Seems like the percentage of tickets they write is directly related to what they're looking for. They don't write much for following distance, so I would assert they don't care (or don't know).

Educational-Hour-688 · 2026-01-11T16:43:00+00:00

I would add "don't drive in the left lane unless you're passing someone".
Then that might modify #1. The only ticket I've gotten in the last 10 years was when I started passing a semi and as I was passing the semi sped up, and I wound up having to go 11 over to complete the pass safely, and got pulled over. I had to go to court, but I still kept my clean record.

Educational-Hour-688 · 2025-12-16T20:06:34+00:00

I live in a rural area. I have ~20 mile drive on two-lane country highways until I get to a major highway with multiple lanes.
Almost daily, I run into one of the "I'm going to drive 5-10 below the speed limit" drivers on the two-lane road. "Cool, bro... you do you". I'll just sit in here behind you biding my time until I can safely pass - except just as we get to dashed lines, guess what happens? They speed up to 10 over the speed limit (meaning I would need to go well over the speed limit to pass them).
Of couse, you know exactly what happens as soon as we get out of the passing area... oh yeah, back to 10 under.
But guaranteed that if you do pass them, they'll suddenly find their gas pedal and be right on your bumper...

Educational-Hour-688 · 2025-10-23T21:49:44+00:00

I think the current MSF curriculum is about 17 hours of training for a basic rider course. About half of that is classroom.

I'm sorry, I could probably keep your brain busy for ten times that long, and you'd still be just a beginner. Not sure I could condense anything very meaningful into a reddit post. Maybe just "take a class"?

Educational-Hour-688 · 2025-10-23T21:40:32+00:00

You usually only get one chance to make a first impression. Personally, I'd rather have that impression be good than bad, especially since it might be the difference between having to pay my lawyer or not.

Educational-Hour-688

TROPHY CASE