Detecting Tailgaters With Lasers

stoolpigeon writes "Police in Arizona are using laser range finders to detect and ticket tailgaters. An officer can now measure not only the speed of passing vehicles but also how close they are to one another. The detectors described in the article are built by Laser Technology Inc., a company that provides lasers for traffic control, engineering, and even tactical/military solutions. The article mentions how tailgating is connected to many accidents and incidents of road rage; this observation fits my experience."

Tailgating

[Shadow Wrought]

My experience, too. Tailgating is far more dangerous than mere speeding. So to with wanton lane changing, but that could be more of a CA thing.

Re:Not the Tailgaters Fault

[mythosaz]

Bad traffic in Phoenix has significantly less to do with illegial imigrants who can't read English (sheesh...) and much more to do with the facts that:

(a) Phoenix is too broad for it's own good. People live 30-40-50 miles from where they work.
(b) Phoenix freeway and surface street infrastructre has lagged behind our phenominal growth (see above).
(c) Phoenix is a melting pot. Nobody's actually FROM Phoenix. We're made of EX-somethings. Sure, there's a few natives, but it's NOT the norm.
(d) We have a significant snowbird population (also, see above).

Combine the overloaded bad infrastructure with a nation's worth of driving customs and a constantly supply of new (and seasonal) people, and you're looking at the bulk of what's wrong with Phoenix traffic.

Speeds of 85+ are the norm on I-10 (and 17 and 101/202/60/51) when congestion permits it.

Now that is a good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Tailgating doesn't get anyone to where he wants to go even a milisecond faster. In fact the car in front needs to slow down to accomodate the unsafe driving situation. Tailgating must be one of the most dangerous bad driving practices there is, but I think tickets for it are rare because, without some kind of laser thingy, it's probably hard to document. I'm sure tailgating is a lot more dangerous than speeding.

Re:Tailgating

[operagost]

I just flick boogers.

Re:Tailgating

[Bastian]

Tailgating at night is particularly bothersome. I drove a subcompact car, and an SUV or truck on my tail with its headlights in my eyes is blinding. That's a really dangerous situation on the country roads, where I need to have enough vision to be able to watch for deer, fallen branches, etc.

My usual approach is to just slow down to the point where I'm not overdriving my vision, but since this tends to anger the clueless fuckers behind me, they will often respond by getting even closer or turning on their brights, which just forces me to slow down even more. I don't know why they don't pass; apparently it takes an appreciable amount of intelligence to figure out that the guy who is currently driving at 30 but was going 55 when you first got on his tail is probably not going to speed up and it's easier to just get ahead of him if you really absolutely have to be driving 65 at night during deer season.

Re:Only half of the point...

[Anonymous Cowpat]

sample question from the driving theory test in the UK (paraphrased):
"You are travelling at the spped limit. A car comes up behind you and flashes their lights at you requesting to overtake. Do you:
a) Speed up
b) Slow down
c) Maintain your speed
d) Sound your horn"

The correct answer is c. Frankly, when you go about trying to blind the person infront of you by flashing full beams into their rear-view mirror (particularly at night) for doing nothing more than following Driving Standards Agency advice, you deserve everything you get. Up to and including a stinger missile.

Re:California rules

[L7_]

I always thought it was a flat '2 second' distance. However, most people can't translate seconds (a time unit) into a feet (a distance unit) using the most basic of physics so they come up with the 1ft per 10mph of speed. This flat time rule is the same as your fluctuating distance rule: the slower you are going, the closer you are (in that two seconds you cover less distance) and the faster you are going the further back you are.

I like to look at a car's rear bumper, see it cross one of the dotted lines or reflectors in the road as a reference point and count in my head 'one one-thousand', 'two one-thousand' and if I pass that same reference point in the road before I complete that second 'one-thousand', then I know that I am too close. Much easier to actually calculate than the 1ft per 10mph. ;)

Re:Does this work

[green1]

>> Is the ticketting reducing the number of accidents?

if you are referring to the tailgate-detector tickets, nobody knows yet as there hasn't been enough time to find out.

if you are talking about speeding tickets and red light camera tickets. the answer is absolutely. many studies have shown that with higher enforcment of speed limits and red lights people DO change their driving habits, slow down, and obey signals. Further it has been proven that whith the slower speed of traffic not only are there fewer collisions*, but they are also less likely to involve injuries and death. I know the public perception is that it's a tax, but this is a really simple tax to avoid, don't break the law, and you will NEVER be caught doing so.

reference:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_rdsafety /documents/page/dft_rdsafety_029193.hcsp [dft.gov.uk]
http://ip.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/9/4/302 [bmj.com]
http://www.tfhrc.gov/safety/pubs/05048/index.htm [tfhrc.gov]
http://www.esafety-effects-database.org/applicatio n_15.html [esafety-ef...tabase.org]
and others... (google is your friend)

*I won't use the word accident in this context because the majority of the time it is no accident and any intelligent person can see exactly why it happened

Re:Tailgating

[6Yankee]

I hear a lot of my friends complaining about nocturnal tailgaters - particularly, as you say, the SUV-type things. And yet, a lot of them give me a blank stare when I suggest that they use the anti-dazzle feature of their rear-view mirror.

"You see that thing for hanging the furry dice off of? Flick it."

"Wow..."

Unless they're lucky enough to learn after work in a high-latitude winter, most people will never drive in the dark with an instructor. Which is pretty scary, when you think about it.

Re:California rules

[serbanp]

I guess you're a little slow [sic]... Your math is very good if you're doing 50mph at 5ft from a freaking wall. Then it's good for the genetic pool to slam into it, you deserved that.

In the real life, though, the car in front of you moves at the same speed as you. Since they can't decelerate in zero time, the math to compute the allowed reaction time is a little more complex.

Re:Tailgating is fine

[Chris Burke]

As someone else pointed out, it's a form of drafting so it saves fuel.

It only saves fuel for the person behind. It costs the person in front more fuel. If you're a team, you can save fuel overall, but drafting to save yourself fuel at the cost of some stranger's is being an asshole, and a dangerous asshole to boot.

Plus, sometimes, if you're trying to help somebody out, you come at their bumper from an angle and then just a light tap and you slide into the lane. You spin the other guy out, and it he's any good, he can probably avoid hitting anything deadly.

WTF? "Helping" somebody out by making them spin out while on the road at speed so he can "probably avoid hitting anything deadly"? Seems like the best way to avoid that is to not tailgate so that nobody gets hit at all! Seriously, WTF.

It's a normal part of driving. If you can't handle it, you have no business on the road.

No, it is not normal other than that lots of idiots like to do it. There may be some exceptional cases in which you and somebody you know agree that it is best under particular circumstances, but there is never a good reason to tailgate a stranger. If you do it "normally", you have no business on the road you dangerous moron.

Re:Tailgating 18-wheelers

[Chris Burke]

Tailgating an 18-wheeler is one of the safer forms of tailgating. The truck can't stop faster than your car.

Actually, a lot of 18-wheelers can. Especially if they are not fully loaded. I don't remember what they call the brakes, but they are a different beast than on your car or air brakes like you see on a bus.

Even if the stop should catch you off guard and you impact, it won't likely throw the truck off the road (due to mass), or your car (due to being pinned under the trailer).

Yeah, people get killed because their car wedges itself under the trailer and cleaves the top off the passenger compartment. I think most trucks are supposed to have guards that are low enough to prevent this, specifically to prevent this from happening, but I don't think all do because I still hear about it happening from time to time.

Re:Moo

[belmolis]

It is probably true that for certain classes of vehicle on certain types of road speed limits that were set twenty or thirty years ago are now lower than they need to be. What concerns me about relying on this to set the safe limit at, say, 10 mph above the posted limit is: (a) on an unfamiliar road, you don't know when the limit was set; it may be recent; (b) you often don't know the basis for the limit. That is, if the controlling factor was the physical condition and curvature of the road, it may be true that you can go faster due to the greater ability of your vehicle to hold the road etc. of your more modern vehicle, but what if the limiting factor is the driveway or school bus stop that you can't see around the curve? (c) Some people drive vehicles that don't stop as well, or don't hold the road as well, or whatever. This may be due to having an old vehicle or one that hasn't been well maintained or to the type of vehicle. Even a current SUV, for example, can't take curves at as high a speed as a compact.

Re:Tailgating

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Gawkers should have their driving privileges revoked.

I hear in several european countries, they bring out a big curtain to put around traffic accidents, to keep gawkers from slowing down traffic and causing a bigger mess

Then you have really stupid people. A few years ago we had some paintings on a building by one of our highways (the kennedy expresway). I saw people stop their cars on the damn expressway, literally zero miles an hour in a traffic lane, to take a pic. The areas was close to a curve as well, so not a lot of long distance cisibility.

Re:Tailgating

[Anonymous Coward]

You should properly site George Carlin for that quote.

Re:Fog lights == Removal of tailgaters

[YomikoReadman]

Negative, ghostrider. Good Samaritan laws don't require you to do anything. Their purpose is to protect you in the event that you stop to lend assistance which is within your ability to render from a civil suit following the incident.