I try to leave a two second space between me and the car ahead of me while driving on the freeway. By leaving that space, I'm following the rules I learned in my driver's manual from 1991. That two second space will allow me enough time to brake if the car ahead of me makes a sudden stop.
But I have a problem. Drivers in Houston like to slip in between my two second space, and then I'm left with one second. Today, I was following a large 18 wheeler, so I left two to three seconds. Then, someone crowded in one of my seconds, and then somebody else crowded in what was left of the seconds, and I had about .5 seconds remaining.
We are not trains, we are automobiles. We don't need to drive so close we are linked. The personal space that an American requires (compared with other countries) when not in a car is greater than in a car. For some reason, our culture has adopted NASCAR as the official sponsor of highway driving. Do we not understand how many of us are crashing into one another?
I think there might be a law against following too closely. Lately, I've been thinking about buying a car like the one the google maps people have and use it to make driving instructional videos (okay, okay! And I want to give out violation tickets!). Or maybe it might be a better idea if I could have a horn that would say, "Stand back!" like those old Viper car alarms. And if anybody got to close, I could blow the horn and freak them out, but that might not be a good idea, because then they might slam on the brakes.
It's weird. Why are we so afraid to be close to one another when a car is not surrounding us, but with the car, we all become magnets with no barrier for space?
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