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I got one of those dongles from my insurance company that plugged into the ODB2 port and reported my driving habits. I was a bad driver. It would frequently be

I got one of those dongles from my insurance company that plugged into the ODB2 port and reported my driving habits. I was a bad driver. It would frequently beep at me to let me know that I had braked too hard. I was mystified. "What should I have done differently," I'd think, as I raged at the objective machine that judged me so. The next time my brother came to visit, he called mom. "Oh, and presidentender is a good driver now." I didn't put the pieces together right away, but it turned out that the dongle had actually trained me, like a dog's shock collar. The reason for my too-frequent hard-braking events wasn't speed, although that would be a contributing factor. It was a lack of appropriate following distance. Because I'd follow the drivers in front of me too closely I'd have to brake hard if they did... Or if they drive normally and happened to have a turn coming up. Over the period I had the insurance spy box in my truck I learned without thinking about it to increase my following distance, which meant that riding with me as a passenger was more comfortable and it beeped less often. Of course since I'd been so naughty early during the evaluation they didn't decrease my rates, but I think the training probably did make me statistically less likely to crash.

xnx 7mo ago
Thanks for sharing. I'm genuinely impressed to hear someone publicly share a story of growing self awareness and improvement.
socalgal2 7mo ago
I'm always surprised at the number of people that follow too closely. This always stuck with me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJFOTSYJrtw&t=466s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJFOTSYJrtw&t=466s
HoldOnAMinute 7mo ago
Is there any vehicle that uses it's sensors to make a gentle suggestion about following distance? It's probably the best single thing anyone can do to improve safety. It also reduces wear-and-tear on your car, and increases your fuel economy as a side benefit. Why hasn't gamification of safe driving habits been built directly into the car itself before now?
- SoftTalker 7mo ago
  A lot of them do. My wife's VW beeps an alert if you're too close to the car ahead of you. It might be that it only activates above a certain speed. I think it will also back down the cruise control (if set) if it detects that you are gaining on the car ahead. That might be MILs Toyota though. I learned the "two second rule" in Driver's Education 45 years ago and generally follow that. Nothing more annoying than having the car behind you riding your bumper.
- ARandomerDude 7mo ago
  > Why hasn't gamification of safe driving habits been built directly into the car itself before now? I am so glad it hasn't. Data point of one, but gamification now has the opposite effect on me: it's such a well-worn pattern that it just annoys me. It was great when it was novel. I wonder how many others feel the same but without sampling it's hard to know.
  - yial 7mo ago
    I concur with you regarding gamification. When I am aware of the gamification it fills me with exhaustion to annoyance to extreme frustration. This is especially true of things that I want to use for one purpose. I also think some of the car sensors (Subaru especially) that are trying to make you safer are notoriously bad. I also find the random “coffee break” notice on Subarus frustrating. My personal examples: “eyes on the road” - triggered frequently by one pair of sunglasses I have, looking left to check blind spot, checking mirrors, etc. “Hands on the steering wheel” - triggered occasionally on long drives when I have been giving input, but very light input.
    - ErroneousBosh 7mo ago
      I drove one of our Kia Niro EVs that we have at work recently, and it started warning me to take a break about fifteen minutes into the drive. I'd barely left the yard, certainly hadn't made it across town. It went off when I actually did stop for a coffee, but went on again 15 minutes after I left the car park. I have to say its various combinations of bings and bongs and beeps were about the most distracting thing I've ever experienced in a vehicle.
jjice 7mo ago
I have a friend who would also follow too closely to the cars in front and got one of these. Her rates went up and she eventually got into an accident (no injuries to anyone) because she would follow too closely and still break too hard. Now she still has the machine, still follows too closely, and still breaks too hard in her new car... Good it worked for you though!
- yial 7mo ago
  A cousin of mine is abysmal to drive with as a passenger. He follows too closely to the car in front of him, regardless of lane / speed. He will slow down, follow closely, and then aggressively pass. Repeating ad nauseam. No smooth maintaining of speed and nice passes as able without slowing down. Surprisingly, his accidents have mostly seemed to involve gas pumps, barriers, and other obstacles at low speed.
  - toxik 7mo ago
    This is left lane driving policy. I am like this, and I was not at first. What makes you drive like this is rush hour traffic. "Move up the lane or move out of the lane" is the sentiment, basically. As others have noted, it is essentially an adversarial process. If you drive nice, people cut in front and you're unable to drive nice to both those behind you and in front.
    - sagarm 7mo ago
      Letting them "cut in front" is good driving.
      - Dylan16807 7mo ago
        If you have to keep significantly slowing down to get the gap back, that's perfectly nice to the people in front of you but it's not nice to the people behind you.
    - yial 7mo ago
      I don’t think what you’re describing is quite the same thing. At least I hope not. More concrete example: He will be going 65 mph in slow lane. Come up on a car. (Left lane empty). Slam on his brakes. Follow them at 50 mph for 1-3 minutes <1 car length. Pass, flooring it, if he stays in the left lane he’ll keep going until he now tail gates a car in front of him- usually with large speed variances. The amount of traffic on the road doesn’t matter. It can be 3 cars and he will drive this way. I’m not talking about trying to drive through major city rush hour traffic.
mountain_peak 7mo ago
Maintaining a safe following distance is incredibly challenging on busy freeways where hard braking is often 'required'. Most people have likely found themselves in this situation: vehicle changes lanes in front of you; you slow down to maintain a safe following distance, another car sees a gap and changes lanes in front of you. Repeat for your entire commute. Incredibly frustrating, and I've driven all over North America - there's practically no major city where this doesn't happen. If you're not maintaining a safe following distance on city/residential streets, that's a different matter.
- hansvm 7mo ago
  This was part of the training materials of one bus driver I knew. When people continually take that gap and you continually have to back off, it only adds a negligible amount of time to the commute.
- amanaplanacanal 7mo ago
  Does it really matter though? Is the end result just a couple of minutes later in a 30 minute commute? Or does it actually make a large difference in travel time?
  - mountain_peak 7mo ago
    It used to be more of an issue when I was younger. Now that I'm older and more 'seasoned' (plus reflexes do slow down), I'm far more patient and have no issue maintaining a healthy following distance. I think the statistics reflect this in age vs. accident rate as well. Unfortunately, sometimes over a 45 minute freeway commute, dropping back repeatedly means arriving 15 minutes or more later. Again, no big deal now, but it was somehow unacceptable when I was younger.
    - Noumenon72 7mo ago
      For your commute to take 4/3 the time, you would have to be averaging 3/4 the speed -- going 45 in a 60. That doesn't make sense because even going 55 would mean traffic pulled away from you rather than you having to drop back from it. Going 55/60ths the speed means you arrive in 60/55ths the time, or an extra 4 minutes on a 45 minute commute.
MisterTea 7mo ago
Safe following is super important. Few years back about a month after I bought a new car I was driving to work keeping a larger than normal gap thanks to a bit of "new car" anxiety. I was in the left lane, keeping pace with a cluster of three cars ahead of me, two of them tailgating. I don't know what happened but within seconds the middle car swerved, side swiped a car in the middle lane then rear ended the lead car while the trailing car rear ended them. Four cars smashed up right in front of me. I was fine because I had plenty of time to slow down and pull onto the shoulder to clear the chaos.
- wffurr 7mo ago
  Just like Lightning McQueen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvhFjVj7k44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvhFjVj7k44
hiq 7mo ago
As a passenger, I really notice the difference, and I wish more drivers (including professionals) would learn as you did. It probably saves energy as well, especially when driving in cities, although I guess it's marginal.
- dietr1ch 7mo ago
  I don't think it's marginal since accelerating the car needs way more energy than fighting loses due to wind and tyre resistance. Also, a bad driver mis-breaking trips the cars behind into breaking too, which multiplies the energy waste and may also cause accidents through fatigue. Mare experienced drivers will give you more leeway to avoid tapping the brakes with you, or simply go for a staring overtake.
- coredog64 7mo ago
  Back when I had a Prius, I made a conscious effort to avoid using the brake pedal during the highway portion of my commute. It made a small difference to fuel economy, but treating it as a game reduced the frustration with stop&go traffic.
  - xnx 7mo ago
    2 sides to hypermiling: 1) Maintain a safe distances so you touch the brake as little as possible 2) Follow so close to the other car that you draft behind them (not recommended!)
daringrain32781 7mo ago
I was recently driving a friend and hit a mile-long backup at a freeway exit. At some point in the lineup, a car abruptly cut in front of me to merge into the line. The friend asked "why'd you let them in" - but I didn't let them in on purpose, I was just maintaining a reasonable following distance which people seem to interpret as "hey cut in here for free"
- dietr1ch 7mo ago
  The balance between safe following distance and letting people cut in varies a lot by city. Maybe he learnt to drive elsewhere? I remember being too aggressive when I got to the Bay Area, and learning how nice it was to be let into the lane I needed to avoid being forced on a 5mi U-turn. When visiting back home I was too nice and people told me so. I've reached a balance. Aggressive enough not to be taken advantage of, but being nice to drivers in need, specially when it doesn't really change things for me, like when letting a driver in costs me nothing because of how bad traffic is.
- bluGill 7mo ago
  It is called the zipper merge. You were in the wrong for waiting in the stophed lane and the other person right for passing all you thinking you are better.
  - rationalist 7mo ago
    I'm pretty sure the other person is not talking about a 2-to-1 lane merge. Calling that person an idiot for your misunderstanding is not cool.
radlad 7mo ago
On the other hand, at age 20, with very high premiums, I got one of these devices which never beeped except on a few too-short exit ramps on highways in my city. The choice on these exits is to slow down traffic on the highway, or endure a "hard stop" by braking immediately when you are on the ramp, and coming to a full stop at the stop sign. Just a few of these was enough that my "discount" was only a few dollars. I regret giving Progressive my driving data.
- ip26 7mo ago
  I had a somewhat similar experience - as I recall, most beeps happened as a result of a few stop lights with too-short yellows (e.g. the light changes yellow and you, even though you are below the speed limit, either panic stop or run the red light) The only possible fix as a driver was to try to develop an intuition for spotting “stale” greens and start slowing down despite the green, anticipating the yellow. I feel at least partially vindicated by the fact the lights in question eventually had their yellows extended.
- marcosdumay 7mo ago
  If there's no extra exit lane, the right choice is to slow down traffic on the highway. What will happen if there's some oil spill or brake failure at the point you think you should break hard?
  - radlad 7mo ago
    The exit ramp is not sufficiently short as to be unable to stop safely, even with my old 2001 Toyota Corolla. It is however sufficiently short that you cannot stop without recording a 'hard brake' on the Progressive Snapshot device. Obviously the calculus changes at rush hour when the exit ramp (and highway) begin to back up. And in those cases, yes, of course the correct answer is to slow down before the ramp, even if it means impeding traffic. (Or take the next exit.) Just for fun, there's also a very short entrance ramp onto a 65mph highway in this city, which requires you to accelerate uphill from a stop sign with a very limited runway (~200 ft.) This entrance has been responsible for far more accidents and crashes than the exit I initially described.
- 7mo ago
Gud 7mo ago
I can only speak for Europe, but driving too closely to the driver in front is unfortunately how 90% of drivers drive. Unless it’s in Netherlands, where it’s 100%.
- binkHN 7mo ago
  I haven't been to the Netherlands, but I would say Paris is pretty close to 100%!
dheera 7mo ago
> It was a lack of appropriate following distance. Not in my case. I keep plenty of following distance, 9 times out of 10 my hard braking is because some idiot cuts into that following distance and brake-checks me.
darkteflon 7mo ago
People here in Tokyo follow at obscenely tight distance on the freeways and motorways. Drives me crazy. Don't have the data, but having driven here for over 20 years, I’d venture that short following distances must be one of the main causes of accidents on these types of roads. People are otherwise generally cautious and attentive drivers. When I’ve expressed frustration about it to locals in the past, the response is often “but if you leave more space, people will cut in!” To which I respond, “okay, and?!” I feel like a single big media campaign to improve following distances could result in a big improvement. So frustrating.
camel_gopher 7mo ago
The problem with increasing your following distance though is now you get other drivers cutting in, and you’re back to where you started
- bluGill 7mo ago
  Only two, then people who maintain their lane are there and there is space.
- hamdingers 7mo ago
  > you’re back to where you started This perfectly illustrates this broken mental model that leads to endless frustration. Unless you put the car in reverse, you are still making forward progress. If someone merges in front of you at 30mph then you traveled hundreds of feet towards your destination in the time it took them to do that. Chill out.
MeteorMarc 7mo ago
If you have to brake hard, it is still important to not brake harder than necessary, to give the cars behind you the best possible chance to react in time.
iamflimflam1 7mo ago
As one of my friends put it - driving in the US is like being in Whacky Races.
SLWW 7mo ago
While i find everything about this post thoroughly dystopian; I will state that I don't break harshly, just about ever, my car still has it's original breakpads (they still have some life, about a cm and a half to two) and it had 107k on the odo. Never been in an accident outside of getting break-checked by an insurance scammer when I was 19, and a head on when i was stopped at a stop sign. Although I keep a varying follow distance, if there is an open lane immediately adjacent to me, I don't care if i'm tailing someone a bit, but if I'm boxed then you better believe it's 6+ car distance.
kqr 7mo ago
Not only are you less likely to crash -- you're less likely to cause a crash ten cars behind you. This diagram changed how I think about following distance: https://entropicthoughts.com/keep-a-safe-following-distance https://entropicthoughts.com/keep-a-safe-following-distance
- pinkmuffinere 7mo ago
  I find this diagram _incredibly_ hard to read. I’m pretty sure I understand the phenomenon he’s describing — without safe following distances, car n+1 must break more aggressively than car n in order to avoid a collision, so given a long enough chain of non-safe followers, a collision is guaranteed. But either I am dumber than I’d like, or that plot is terrible.
  - CarVac 7mo ago
    The choice of X and Y axis are absolutely terrible.
  - fransje26 7mo ago
    The plot is trying to illustrate the solution to an equation that is quite similar to Burger's equation, with a strong dependency on space and time. That's not easy to do in a single, static image. When the characteristics meet (when the lines overlap), you get a shock wave. Or, in the current context, a traffic collision.
taeric 7mo ago
Kudos on you for acknowledging that your behavior changed! It is depressing how many people online are convinced that the emergency braking systems are too aggressive. The best is the cohort that insist these systems will be what causes accidents.
deleted 7mo ago
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dpatrick86 7mo ago
It would be really interesting if cars did this by default. Maybe it could figure out your threshold, how much of an outlier you are, and then you could opt-in to a new threshold that's somewhat better and/or closer to average.
mjbale116 7mo ago
I have this image in my mind of a discussion taking place in a high speed rail possibly around 2100 where people will look back and say: "I cannot believe we had people driving 2ton steel boxes back in the day, I cannot even compute those micromorts"
CGMthrowaway 7mo ago
>I'd follow the drivers in front of me too closely Best trick for managing this is to "drive through" the car in front of you. That is, judge your following distance based not on the car in front of you, but on the car in front of THEM. And you don't have to "drive through" all the way down the road - it only takes one car/one level of abstraction for this approach to yield really great benefits, try it if you don't believe me.
- eldaisfish 7mo ago
  This only works if you can see two vehicles ahead. Too many SUVs and pickup trucks are too high and have terrible visibility around them.
  - CGMthrowaway 7mo ago
    See "Lane Positions" under Basic Driving Skills: https://www.oregon.gov/odot/dmv/pages/online_parent_guide_to_teen_driving/06_basic_driving_skills.aspx https://www.oregon.gov/odot/dmv/pages/online_parent_guide_to...
redanddead 7mo ago
Insurance erotica right here lol
tsoukase 7mo ago
Inter-car distance is always a safety factor but can immensely reduce lane throughput. There is a compromise. I remember a few decades ago, in California at least, they suggested the drivers keep a one-car length distance from the leading car for every 10m/h speed. Funny that I had to convert it in km/h.
- techterrier 7mo ago
  not dying >>>>>> lane throughput
  - tsoukase 7mo ago
    I am sure this rule of thumb was suggested after thoughtful weighing of traffic accident risk and jams in Cali's 8-lane highways. Everything is a compromise, often versus life.
- consp 7mo ago
  Inter car distance is highly irrelevant as the overall speed will quickly drop due to excessive braking due to tailgating. Maximum throughout is around 60kph. You keep 2s distance if you want to be safe. So at highway speeds that is around 50 to 70 meters
eigart 7mo ago
That’s pretty cool. Reminded me of reading [0] about how training surgeons using click feedback, like when you train a dog, works really well. [0] https://www.npr.org/2018/06/12/619109741/clicker-training-for-dogs-is-adapted-to-help-surgeons-learn-quickly https://www.npr.org/2018/06/12/619109741/clicker-training-fo...
ndsipa_pomu 7mo ago
I've long thought that drivers should have some kind of black box monitoring their driving habits/abilities with that kind of acceleration sensing. As well as feeding into insurance databases to give safer drivers lower premiums, I think it would be ideal to highlight when older drivers start to lose their faculties. Another big benefit could be to diagnose some diseases early on - if a driver suddenly becomes less smooth, there's a good chance that they have some new eye or brain condition.
Mawr 7mo ago
Driving predictably and smoothly is good. The only time there should be any braking considered remotely "hard" would be when something surprised you, which should almost never happen.
lowercased 7mo ago
I've got a tracker and it keeps showing "sharp turn" right in my neighborhood. It's counting the turn in to my driveway - a 90 degree turn - as a "sharp turn". It doesn't seem to matter how slow I go - I'm not racing in to the driveway - generally slowed to walking speed by that point - and I'm still getting 'dinged' every day for this.
m463 7mo ago
I knew an actuary, and remember wondering "why do sports cars cost so much to insure?" Turns out that actuaries have very good data about which kinds of cars have more accidents, and cost more to insure. She said the only time that the data and the rates do not match is after an accident. After an accident, the rates go up, however drivers are more careful and are statistically less likely to have an accident.

xnx 7mo ago

Thanks for sharing. I'm genuinely impressed to hear someone publicly share a story of growing self awareness and improvement.

socalgal2 7mo ago

I'm always surprised at the number of people that follow too closely. This always stuck with me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJFOTSYJrtw&t=466s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJFOTSYJrtw&t=466s

HoldOnAMinute 7mo ago

Is there any vehicle that uses it's sensors to make a gentle suggestion about following distance? It's probably the best single thing anyone can do to improve safety. It also reduces wear-and-tear on your car, and increases your fuel economy as a side benefit. Why hasn't gamification of safe driving habits been built directly into the car itself before now?

SoftTalker 7mo ago
A lot of them do. My wife's VW beeps an alert if you're too close to the car ahead of you. It might be that it only activates above a certain speed. I think it will also back down the cruise control (if set) if it detects that you are gaining on the car ahead. That might be MILs Toyota though. I learned the "two second rule" in Driver's Education 45 years ago and generally follow that. Nothing more annoying than having the car behind you riding your bumper.
ARandomerDude 7mo ago
> Why hasn't gamification of safe driving habits been built directly into the car itself before now? I am so glad it hasn't. Data point of one, but gamification now has the opposite effect on me: it's such a well-worn pattern that it just annoys me. It was great when it was novel. I wonder how many others feel the same but without sampling it's hard to know.
- yial 7mo ago
  I concur with you regarding gamification. When I am aware of the gamification it fills me with exhaustion to annoyance to extreme frustration. This is especially true of things that I want to use for one purpose. I also think some of the car sensors (Subaru especially) that are trying to make you safer are notoriously bad. I also find the random “coffee break” notice on Subarus frustrating. My personal examples: “eyes on the road” - triggered frequently by one pair of sunglasses I have, looking left to check blind spot, checking mirrors, etc. “Hands on the steering wheel” - triggered occasionally on long drives when I have been giving input, but very light input.
  - ErroneousBosh 7mo ago
    I drove one of our Kia Niro EVs that we have at work recently, and it started warning me to take a break about fifteen minutes into the drive. I'd barely left the yard, certainly hadn't made it across town. It went off when I actually did stop for a coffee, but went on again 15 minutes after I left the car park. I have to say its various combinations of bings and bongs and beeps were about the most distracting thing I've ever experienced in a vehicle.

jjice 7mo ago

I have a friend who would also follow too closely to the cars in front and got one of these. Her rates went up and she eventually got into an accident (no injuries to anyone) because she would follow too closely and still break too hard. Now she still has the machine, still follows too closely, and still breaks too hard in her new car... Good it worked for you though!

yial 7mo ago
A cousin of mine is abysmal to drive with as a passenger. He follows too closely to the car in front of him, regardless of lane / speed. He will slow down, follow closely, and then aggressively pass. Repeating ad nauseam. No smooth maintaining of speed and nice passes as able without slowing down. Surprisingly, his accidents have mostly seemed to involve gas pumps, barriers, and other obstacles at low speed.
- toxik 7mo ago
  This is left lane driving policy. I am like this, and I was not at first. What makes you drive like this is rush hour traffic. "Move up the lane or move out of the lane" is the sentiment, basically. As others have noted, it is essentially an adversarial process. If you drive nice, people cut in front and you're unable to drive nice to both those behind you and in front.
  - sagarm 7mo ago
    Letting them "cut in front" is good driving.
    - Dylan16807 7mo ago
      If you have to keep significantly slowing down to get the gap back, that's perfectly nice to the people in front of you but it's not nice to the people behind you.
  - yial 7mo ago
    I don’t think what you’re describing is quite the same thing. At least I hope not. More concrete example: He will be going 65 mph in slow lane. Come up on a car. (Left lane empty). Slam on his brakes. Follow them at 50 mph for 1-3 minutes <1 car length. Pass, flooring it, if he stays in the left lane he’ll keep going until he now tail gates a car in front of him- usually with large speed variances. The amount of traffic on the road doesn’t matter. It can be 3 cars and he will drive this way. I’m not talking about trying to drive through major city rush hour traffic.

mountain_peak 7mo ago

Maintaining a safe following distance is incredibly challenging on busy freeways where hard braking is often 'required'. Most people have likely found themselves in this situation: vehicle changes lanes in front of you; you slow down to maintain a safe following distance, another car sees a gap and changes lanes in front of you. Repeat for your entire commute. Incredibly frustrating, and I've driven all over North America - there's practically no major city where this doesn't happen. If you're not maintaining a safe following distance on city/residential streets, that's a different matter.

hansvm 7mo ago
This was part of the training materials of one bus driver I knew. When people continually take that gap and you continually have to back off, it only adds a negligible amount of time to the commute.
amanaplanacanal 7mo ago
Does it really matter though? Is the end result just a couple of minutes later in a 30 minute commute? Or does it actually make a large difference in travel time?
- mountain_peak 7mo ago
  It used to be more of an issue when I was younger. Now that I'm older and more 'seasoned' (plus reflexes do slow down), I'm far more patient and have no issue maintaining a healthy following distance. I think the statistics reflect this in age vs. accident rate as well. Unfortunately, sometimes over a 45 minute freeway commute, dropping back repeatedly means arriving 15 minutes or more later. Again, no big deal now, but it was somehow unacceptable when I was younger.
  - Noumenon72 7mo ago
    For your commute to take 4/3 the time, you would have to be averaging 3/4 the speed -- going 45 in a 60. That doesn't make sense because even going 55 would mean traffic pulled away from you rather than you having to drop back from it. Going 55/60ths the speed means you arrive in 60/55ths the time, or an extra 4 minutes on a 45 minute commute.

MisterTea 7mo ago

Safe following is super important. Few years back about a month after I bought a new car I was driving to work keeping a larger than normal gap thanks to a bit of "new car" anxiety. I was in the left lane, keeping pace with a cluster of three cars ahead of me, two of them tailgating. I don't know what happened but within seconds the middle car swerved, side swiped a car in the middle lane then rear ended the lead car while the trailing car rear ended them. Four cars smashed up right in front of me. I was fine because I had plenty of time to slow down and pull onto the shoulder to clear the chaos.

wffurr 7mo ago
Just like Lightning McQueen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvhFjVj7k44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvhFjVj7k44

hiq 7mo ago

As a passenger, I really notice the difference, and I wish more drivers (including professionals) would learn as you did. It probably saves energy as well, especially when driving in cities, although I guess it's marginal.

dietr1ch 7mo ago
I don't think it's marginal since accelerating the car needs way more energy than fighting loses due to wind and tyre resistance. Also, a bad driver mis-breaking trips the cars behind into breaking too, which multiplies the energy waste and may also cause accidents through fatigue. Mare experienced drivers will give you more leeway to avoid tapping the brakes with you, or simply go for a staring overtake.
coredog64 7mo ago
Back when I had a Prius, I made a conscious effort to avoid using the brake pedal during the highway portion of my commute. It made a small difference to fuel economy, but treating it as a game reduced the frustration with stop&go traffic.
- xnx 7mo ago
  2 sides to hypermiling: 1) Maintain a safe distances so you touch the brake as little as possible 2) Follow so close to the other car that you draft behind them (not recommended!)

daringrain32781 7mo ago

I was recently driving a friend and hit a mile-long backup at a freeway exit. At some point in the lineup, a car abruptly cut in front of me to merge into the line. The friend asked "why'd you let them in" - but I didn't let them in on purpose, I was just maintaining a reasonable following distance which people seem to interpret as "hey cut in here for free"

dietr1ch 7mo ago
The balance between safe following distance and letting people cut in varies a lot by city. Maybe he learnt to drive elsewhere? I remember being too aggressive when I got to the Bay Area, and learning how nice it was to be let into the lane I needed to avoid being forced on a 5mi U-turn. When visiting back home I was too nice and people told me so. I've reached a balance. Aggressive enough not to be taken advantage of, but being nice to drivers in need, specially when it doesn't really change things for me, like when letting a driver in costs me nothing because of how bad traffic is.
bluGill 7mo ago
It is called the zipper merge. You were in the wrong for waiting in the stophed lane and the other person right for passing all you thinking you are better.
- rationalist 7mo ago
  I'm pretty sure the other person is not talking about a 2-to-1 lane merge. Calling that person an idiot for your misunderstanding is not cool.

radlad 7mo ago

On the other hand, at age 20, with very high premiums, I got one of these devices which never beeped except on a few too-short exit ramps on highways in my city. The choice on these exits is to slow down traffic on the highway, or endure a "hard stop" by braking immediately when you are on the ramp, and coming to a full stop at the stop sign. Just a few of these was enough that my "discount" was only a few dollars. I regret giving Progressive my driving data.

ip26 7mo ago
I had a somewhat similar experience - as I recall, most beeps happened as a result of a few stop lights with too-short yellows (e.g. the light changes yellow and you, even though you are below the speed limit, either panic stop or run the red light) The only possible fix as a driver was to try to develop an intuition for spotting “stale” greens and start slowing down despite the green, anticipating the yellow. I feel at least partially vindicated by the fact the lights in question eventually had their yellows extended.
marcosdumay 7mo ago
If there's no extra exit lane, the right choice is to slow down traffic on the highway. What will happen if there's some oil spill or brake failure at the point you think you should break hard?
- radlad 7mo ago
  The exit ramp is not sufficiently short as to be unable to stop safely, even with my old 2001 Toyota Corolla. It is however sufficiently short that you cannot stop without recording a 'hard brake' on the Progressive Snapshot device. Obviously the calculus changes at rush hour when the exit ramp (and highway) begin to back up. And in those cases, yes, of course the correct answer is to slow down before the ramp, even if it means impeding traffic. (Or take the next exit.) Just for fun, there's also a very short entrance ramp onto a 65mph highway in this city, which requires you to accelerate uphill from a stop sign with a very limited runway (~200 ft.) This entrance has been responsible for far more accidents and crashes than the exit I initially described.
7mo ago

Gud 7mo ago

I can only speak for Europe, but driving too closely to the driver in front is unfortunately how 90% of drivers drive. Unless it’s in Netherlands, where it’s 100%.

binkHN 7mo ago
I haven't been to the Netherlands, but I would say Paris is pretty close to 100%!

dheera 7mo ago

> It was a lack of appropriate following distance. Not in my case. I keep plenty of following distance, 9 times out of 10 my hard braking is because some idiot cuts into that following distance and brake-checks me.

darkteflon 7mo ago

People here in Tokyo follow at obscenely tight distance on the freeways and motorways. Drives me crazy. Don't have the data, but having driven here for over 20 years, I’d venture that short following distances must be one of the main causes of accidents on these types of roads. People are otherwise generally cautious and attentive drivers. When I’ve expressed frustration about it to locals in the past, the response is often “but if you leave more space, people will cut in!” To which I respond, “okay, and?!” I feel like a single big media campaign to improve following distances could result in a big improvement. So frustrating.

camel_gopher 7mo ago

The problem with increasing your following distance though is now you get other drivers cutting in, and you’re back to where you started

bluGill 7mo ago
Only two, then people who maintain their lane are there and there is space.
hamdingers 7mo ago
> you’re back to where you started This perfectly illustrates this broken mental model that leads to endless frustration. Unless you put the car in reverse, you are still making forward progress. If someone merges in front of you at 30mph then you traveled hundreds of feet towards your destination in the time it took them to do that. Chill out.

MeteorMarc 7mo ago

If you have to brake hard, it is still important to not brake harder than necessary, to give the cars behind you the best possible chance to react in time.

iamflimflam1 7mo ago

As one of my friends put it - driving in the US is like being in Whacky Races.

SLWW 7mo ago

While i find everything about this post thoroughly dystopian; I will state that I don't break harshly, just about ever, my car still has it's original breakpads (they still have some life, about a cm and a half to two) and it had 107k on the odo. Never been in an accident outside of getting break-checked by an insurance scammer when I was 19, and a head on when i was stopped at a stop sign. Although I keep a varying follow distance, if there is an open lane immediately adjacent to me, I don't care if i'm tailing someone a bit, but if I'm boxed then you better believe it's 6+ car distance.

kqr 7mo ago

Not only are you less likely to crash -- you're less likely to cause a crash ten cars behind you. This diagram changed how I think about following distance: https://entropicthoughts.com/keep-a-safe-following-distance https://entropicthoughts.com/keep-a-safe-following-distance

pinkmuffinere 7mo ago
I find this diagram _incredibly_ hard to read. I’m pretty sure I understand the phenomenon he’s describing — without safe following distances, car n+1 must break more aggressively than car n in order to avoid a collision, so given a long enough chain of non-safe followers, a collision is guaranteed. But either I am dumber than I’d like, or that plot is terrible.
- CarVac 7mo ago
  The choice of X and Y axis are absolutely terrible.
- fransje26 7mo ago
  The plot is trying to illustrate the solution to an equation that is quite similar to Burger's equation, with a strong dependency on space and time. That's not easy to do in a single, static image. When the characteristics meet (when the lines overlap), you get a shock wave. Or, in the current context, a traffic collision.

taeric 7mo ago

Kudos on you for acknowledging that your behavior changed! It is depressing how many people online are convinced that the emergency braking systems are too aggressive. The best is the cohort that insist these systems will be what causes accidents.

deleted 7mo ago

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dpatrick86 7mo ago

It would be really interesting if cars did this by default. Maybe it could figure out your threshold, how much of an outlier you are, and then you could opt-in to a new threshold that's somewhat better and/or closer to average.

mjbale116 7mo ago

I have this image in my mind of a discussion taking place in a high speed rail possibly around 2100 where people will look back and say: "I cannot believe we had people driving 2ton steel boxes back in the day, I cannot even compute those micromorts"

CGMthrowaway 7mo ago

>I'd follow the drivers in front of me too closely Best trick for managing this is to "drive through" the car in front of you. That is, judge your following distance based not on the car in front of you, but on the car in front of THEM. And you don't have to "drive through" all the way down the road - it only takes one car/one level of abstraction for this approach to yield really great benefits, try it if you don't believe me.

eldaisfish 7mo ago
This only works if you can see two vehicles ahead. Too many SUVs and pickup trucks are too high and have terrible visibility around them.
- CGMthrowaway 7mo ago
  See "Lane Positions" under Basic Driving Skills: https://www.oregon.gov/odot/dmv/pages/online_parent_guide_to_teen_driving/06_basic_driving_skills.aspx https://www.oregon.gov/odot/dmv/pages/online_parent_guide_to...

redanddead 7mo ago

Insurance erotica right here lol

tsoukase 7mo ago

Inter-car distance is always a safety factor but can immensely reduce lane throughput. There is a compromise. I remember a few decades ago, in California at least, they suggested the drivers keep a one-car length distance from the leading car for every 10m/h speed. Funny that I had to convert it in km/h.

techterrier 7mo ago
not dying >>>>>> lane throughput
- tsoukase 7mo ago
  I am sure this rule of thumb was suggested after thoughtful weighing of traffic accident risk and jams in Cali's 8-lane highways. Everything is a compromise, often versus life.
consp 7mo ago
Inter car distance is highly irrelevant as the overall speed will quickly drop due to excessive braking due to tailgating. Maximum throughout is around 60kph. You keep 2s distance if you want to be safe. So at highway speeds that is around 50 to 70 meters

eigart 7mo ago

That’s pretty cool. Reminded me of reading [0] about how training surgeons using click feedback, like when you train a dog, works really well. [0] https://www.npr.org/2018/06/12/619109741/clicker-training-for-dogs-is-adapted-to-help-surgeons-learn-quickly https://www.npr.org/2018/06/12/619109741/clicker-training-fo...

ndsipa_pomu 7mo ago

I've long thought that drivers should have some kind of black box monitoring their driving habits/abilities with that kind of acceleration sensing. As well as feeding into insurance databases to give safer drivers lower premiums, I think it would be ideal to highlight when older drivers start to lose their faculties. Another big benefit could be to diagnose some diseases early on - if a driver suddenly becomes less smooth, there's a good chance that they have some new eye or brain condition.

Mawr 7mo ago

Driving predictably and smoothly is good. The only time there should be any braking considered remotely "hard" would be when something surprised you, which should almost never happen.

lowercased 7mo ago

I've got a tracker and it keeps showing "sharp turn" right in my neighborhood. It's counting the turn in to my driveway - a 90 degree turn - as a "sharp turn". It doesn't seem to matter how slow I go - I'm not racing in to the driveway - generally slowed to walking speed by that point - and I'm still getting 'dinged' every day for this.

m463 7mo ago

I knew an actuary, and remember wondering "why do sports cars cost so much to insure?" Turns out that actuaries have very good data about which kinds of cars have more accidents, and cost more to insure. She said the only time that the data and the rates do not match is after an accident. After an accident, the rates go up, however drivers are more careful and are statistically less likely to have an accident.