







“What’s your take on the situation?”









6 thoughts on “Is it a 2, 3 or 4-second rule for following on a highway?

  1. I was always taught it’s the “Two potato” rule. “One potato, two potato”.

    Seriously, if you tried to leave four seconds on the freeway during rush hour you’d never get where you’re going because people would be shaking their fists and cutting you off the whole way home.

    Another way I was taught was one car length per 10 miles per hour. The distance between dashed lines in the road is about a car length.

    Here is another question for you, how much distance should you leave between you and the car in front of you at stop light or sign? I was taught that you should be able to see the rear tires touch the ground on the car in front of you. But once again with busy roads and short turn lanes, this is not always the most polite thing to do when others are trying to squeeze into the lane.

    Thanks for the opportunity to share.

  2. I’ve followed the three second rule for yes years. surprisingly no one usually fills in the space. Even in rush hour traffic. sure maybe a few cars slip in every now and then but I have open ed up 50 yards in front of me quite frequently during rush hour. research the affects of adaptive cruise control sometime it’s quite an amazing technology that could reduce rush hour impact around the region

  3. The 4 second rule at 60 MPH equates to 352 feet or just 8 feet less than the goal post to goal post length of a football field. At 30 MPH we should stay a half a field apart and at 40 MPH 2/3’s of a field. I find these tools more useful than counting.

  4. It doesn’t give me the answer to the driving test. Some places they say three seconds and some places in the DMV book they say two seconds

  5. It’s safer to drive fast with adequate distance than slower all bunched up! So many drive as if they’ve never heard of the 3 second rule. Another thing it does is allow safe merging, where the rest car can back off a little and you have the 3 second room again.
    One day, I saw smile coming from the lead car, then more smoke from those behind him, where everyone was locking up. They all collided. I swerved off an exit, as if I recall, I had cars behind me or didn’t have time to check. Similiar situation happened to a friend. He stopped adequately, but was rear ended by another that drove him into the cars collided in front of him.
    Which, there’s always the possibility of getting severely hurt. Which any number will snear at, but when it happens, wishing back doesn’t change the results.
    I’ve had plenty of courteous drivers where they keep a healthy distance, where it feels safe. But I don’t understand others that follow close, as it won’t get them anywhere faster.
    But there are those places where others will zoom in front of a person, then someone else, which might be why some keep tighter distances???
    You know flying an airplane, there’s much more space between vehicles, lol.

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