scott wrote:
> I don't follow your logic here, if you're leaving a 4 second gap to the 
> car immediately ahead, you still have a 4 second gap no matter what the 
> people are doing ahead of you.

You answered your own question:

 > Of course in reality cars don't just instantly stop for no reason,

They do if they run into the person in front of them who is also already 
stopped.

> anything ahead of the car immediately in front.  If they fixed either of 
> those two issues there wouldn't be any pile up.

If *everybody* fixes those two issues, there's no pile-up. If you're car 
#150 of 300, it doesn't much matter whether you hit the guy in front if the 
guys behind you don't leave enough root to stop.

> The key point is to be aware what is happening far enough ahead of you 
> relative to your speed.  Doing 200 km/hr can be safe if you check far 
> enough ahead of you that it is clear (not just the one car ahead of 
> you).  If you can't for whatever reason then you need to slow down until 
> you can see far enough for your speed.

Yes. Sadly, most people around here are really bad drivers.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

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