Alt text:
This PSA brought to you by several would-be assassins who tried to wave me in front of speeding cars in the last month and who will have to try harder next time.
this post was submitted on 14 May 2024
1404 points (99.4% liked)
xkcd
8842 readers
4 users here now
A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
At 100 km/h (low-end highway spreed), or 1,666 m/minute, or 27.7 m per second, a 2 second gap leaves approximately 56.6 m (185.6 feet) between cars. With the average car length being ~4.9 m (~16 feet), even the absolute worst driver can merge in a space ten times the size of the average car, assuming they're matching highway speed.
Most people have no actual concept of how long 2 seconds actually is or how much space it would leave in reality.
Yeah, obviously you "can" merge, but in doing so you insert yourself into the middle of a 2 second gap creating 2 × less than 1 second gaps. Like I said, in this hypothetical everyone is a perfect driver that always follows the rules, so that's not an option.
For that matter, the driver behind should see that you are about to merge into a gap that's too small and slow down to leave a space that's at least 4 seconds big.
I'd also like to point out that your attitude to driving is terrible, the size in meters of anything on a highway is irrelevant, 2 seconds is not a lot of time to react and slow down a car at 100, and that just because you "can" do something doesn't mean you should.