>> 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.

Sure, and you have a 4 second gap so can come almost to a complete stop 
without hitting them.  Even if the guy behind you is only leaving a 0.5 
second gap, he is *not* going to be faced with a stationary car in 0.5 s, he 
is going to be faced with you braking hard, which is vastly easier to deal 
with and will result in a lot less damage if he does hit you.

> 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.

Taken to the extreme, assume everyone is leaving a 0.5 second gap, but you 
are the only one leaving a 10 second gap.  When you see the cars ahead 
piling up, you have plenty of space to start off braking gently and come to 
a stop, the cars behind you are far less likely to pile into the back of 
you, so you have essentially stopped the pile-up continuing by leaving a big 
gap.  It might start again further back up the road if everyone is so close, 
but at least your car is not going to be damaged so badly by the guy 
directly behind smashing into you.

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

Here in Germany the average seems to be a pretty high standard, but you 
still get the odd few.

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