Advice on Safety Bubble in real life
Discussion
Yesterday I attended a speed awareness course on Zoom. Really interesting, actually, and feels like it should be part of driver training in the first place to be honest. The speed differentials section was fairly eye opening.
However, there was a section about maintaining 'your safety bubble', which I struggled a bit with. The idea is that you are aiming to keep a safe stopping distance in front of you, and also behind. The suggestion is that if someone behind you isn't respecting that space (maybe properly tailgating you, but more likely just leaving less of a gap than would be required for the safety bubble) then you should slow down to increase the gap in front of you. As I understand it the idea is this allows you to slow down more gently in an emergency, thus reducing the stopping distance required for the car behind you.
Now. I live in a city, and whenever I have tried this (and I gave it another try today on my commute up the motorway) it's futile, because any gap left in front of you is immediately filled, and you have to reduce speed even further to create your 'bubble' again. Repeat until funny. Before too long you are travelling too slowly causing more issues, or have given in to make some progress. The reality is in fact that you can't even leave a sensible space in front of you never mind compensating for the tailgater, because even that will be filled.
So although it's the accepted system it basically doesn't work. On that basis I was wondering whether there was any more realistic advice from the advanced drivers on here? I'm keen to improve my driving - I've been looking at RoSPA - but this is one thing I can't get my head round in the real world.
Thanks, I look forward to your input everyone!
However, there was a section about maintaining 'your safety bubble', which I struggled a bit with. The idea is that you are aiming to keep a safe stopping distance in front of you, and also behind. The suggestion is that if someone behind you isn't respecting that space (maybe properly tailgating you, but more likely just leaving less of a gap than would be required for the safety bubble) then you should slow down to increase the gap in front of you. As I understand it the idea is this allows you to slow down more gently in an emergency, thus reducing the stopping distance required for the car behind you.
Now. I live in a city, and whenever I have tried this (and I gave it another try today on my commute up the motorway) it's futile, because any gap left in front of you is immediately filled, and you have to reduce speed even further to create your 'bubble' again. Repeat until funny. Before too long you are travelling too slowly causing more issues, or have given in to make some progress. The reality is in fact that you can't even leave a sensible space in front of you never mind compensating for the tailgater, because even that will be filled.
So although it's the accepted system it basically doesn't work. On that basis I was wondering whether there was any more realistic advice from the advanced drivers on here? I'm keen to improve my driving - I've been looking at RoSPA - but this is one thing I can't get my head round in the real world.
Thanks, I look forward to your input everyone!
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