Drivers Should Avoid Tailgating

I am not big on blogging but occasionally I'll post a note to an editor of a local newspaper when I see some bad driver's habit happening many times. This note was published in the Times Daily and the Corrier Journal.

I have recently enjoyed the benefit of an exterior view of our Alabamian motorists and their general driving behavior by a road trip to New Hampshire. It is not more reprehensible than that of motorists in other states I visited on the way but is nonetheless worthy of some comment.

I am referring to the constant habit of driving up behind another car on surface streets and the Interstate so close as to make the other driver nervous or apprehensive, or on the street with a “rush" flavor added to the act of tailgating.

Over and over again I observe the same effect of this monomania, which is the car ahead inevitably slows to make a turn into a driveway or street or exit and the “following too close” has to brake and so do half a dozen more cars behind that one. The usual lineup looks like a train of elephants with the babies’ trunks securely fixed on the mother elephant’s tail.

All that unnecessary braking and so little driving.

We pride ourselves in the South with better than average manners and respect for one another, but all that flies out the window it seems when a motorized engine on four wheels is included in the case.

I recommend, as I did in my book, that any motorist who will admit that they are not an expert driver find a reputable driving academy and take their hands-on advanced driving skill course.

Charles Van Heyden, Author The Careful vs The Careless Driver Owner/Instructor Expert Driving Instruction Institute (Quad Cities)