February, 2020 | Advanced Drivers of North America

The 2-second Rule for ‘Safe’ Following Distances has Long Been WRONG

About 40 percent of all crashes in the USA involve one or more vehicles ramming into another vehicle from behind, and this is a major cause of bad injuries and deaths.

Photograph of a car that has just been in a collision. The airbags have inflated but are now in the process of deflating, and the car's two occupants are still in their seats, stunned. — This photo was taken no more than 2 seconds after the collision that triggered the airbags, which are now in the process of deflating. The driver and his passenger are still in the car, stunned. Possibly through distraction, the car driver had just collided with the back of a truck — not an “accident,” an act of negligence; a collision. (Copyright image, 2012.)

Is driving on the left safer than driving on the right?

In all North American countries the law is literally one-sided: ‘drive on the right.’ But in our corporate ‘defensive’ and ‘advanced’ driver training courses at Advanced Drivers of North America, we are very frequently asked which is safer — driving on the left or the right.