Common sense rules of the road suggest drivers maintain a three-second following distance between themselves and the car ahead of them on a highway. You can calculate this distance by using a fixed object on the road to see if there is enough distance between your car and the motorist in front of you.
As all drivers know, not every one leaves a safe distance between themselves and the car in front of them and this puts both in danger. The tailgater in an especially precarious position because they can’t see what’s happening ahead of them.
The following video posted to Reddit shows what happens when a tailgating driver has no idea what’s happening on the road ahead. The footage is great because the driver of what appears to be a Jeep has a front and back dash cams that show the situation from two angles.
The front cam shows a ladder falling off a truck, the back camera shows a car riding the driver’s tail.
The driver slows down and puts on their hazard lights to move out of the way of the ladder in time, while alerting other drivers of the hazard. The Jeep then swerves out of the way of the ladder in the middle of their lane.
Unfortunately, the tailgater behind him, who had no idea what was happening, drives over the ladder which gets lodged onto his wheel.
Let’s hope that the tailgater was able to get out of the incident safely. And hopefully they learned a lesson about tailgating. Like, don’t tailgate, maybe?