DRIVING TOO CLOSE

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 136, 30 August 1927, Page 7

DRIVING TOO CLOSE

FAULT AMONG MOTORISTS. HOW ACCIDENTS OCCUR. When you are driving in the city or along the road to Sumner on a Sunday in the ear parade do you drive too close? from time to time one hears of expensive crashes caused by motorists driving too close to cars immediately ahead. In practically all eases where a driver is involved in a rearend collision with a car directly ahead the cause can he found in the fact that the offending motorist was too close to the car in front to meet any sudden emergency with which the leading car might be confronted.

One should always allow a sufficient gap between the car one is driving and the one immediately preceding it, so as to permit of one’s pulling up in that gap should the leading car come to a lull stop without warning. Speed, of course, is the governing factor in gauging the correct distance to allow. In the legal aspect of the case it might be as well to remember that a driver is primarily responsible for what is ahead of him, and that the driver of the first car must often depend upon tl\c good judgment of his successor, as the former cannot very well give much attention to what lolloxvs him.

Excepting in cases in which a car backs up without warning, it is always the car behnd that inflicts the damage, and the driver can usually be said to have “walked into it with his eyes wide open.” The fact that the preceding driver may o • may not have given a readable signal is of little value where the distance allowed is incompatible with the speed of the vehicles involved, and the second owner is responsible for that distance.

After all, there probably is some virtue in the sign sometimes displayed on the hack of cars, which reads: “If you can read this you are too d close.”