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E x e c u t i ve S a f e t y St ee ri ng C o mmi t t e e

Keep Your Distance

One of the most common types of crashes is when one vehicle hits
the rear-end of the vehicle in front of it. This happens most often
when the vehicle behind is following too close to avoid a collision if
the front vehicle changes speed unexpectedly, turns, or stops. Not to
mention, tailgating is illegal and considered a form of aggressive
driving. Keeping a safe distance is by far the easiest, yet most com-
monly broken rule of defensive driving. Even if you abide by every
other defensive driving technique, it is impossible to be a safe driver In Florida, a woman was seriously hurt in a
if you do not allow a sufficient distance between you and the car in rear-end collision when her vehicle broke
front of you. If you keep your distance from other drivers, you will down. The van was traveling in the right lane
almost always have an escape route, or be able to evade a collision then proceeded to switch lanes because he
saw other vehicles cruising along and unex-
with ease. Even at highway speeds, maintaining a safe following dis- pectedly met the back of the woman’s car. The
tance lessens the chances of hitting the vehicle in front of you.
woman did not engage her hazard lights.
Determining Your Safe Following Distance

Better! During perfect weather conditions, you should have at
least a 3 second space (4 seconds is better) between
you and the car in front of you. You can do this by using
a fixed object such as a sign, bridge, tree, or even a
crack or shadow on the road. Once the cars bumper
Not
you are following crosses that object, count to three to
Good! your self. For example, one-thousand one, one-
thousand two, one thousand three and so on and so
fourth. If you make it to that fixed object before you
Not reach three, you need to increase your following dis-
Good! tance. If you are being tailgated, safely switch lanes to
avoid incident.

Factoids How Far Do You Travel Before Stopping?

Rear-end collisions account for
28% of all crashes...Resulting in
2,200 deaths and more than
760,000 injuries each year.

Scan to view a video of
how distracted driving
impacts lives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?

! " # $
Gregg Kludjian, Frank Giordano, Joe Garvey, Charley Blizard, James Hardiman, Dave McGinley, Dennis Stapola, and Bill Whelan.