It may be “on them, not you”, but if it keeps happening because of the way you’re driving, then fundamentally it’s on you.
The fact is, if someone drives too differently from other drivers they make things less safe for everyone. It doesn’t matter that if everyone adopted their way of driving it would be safer. It’s still the case that driving too differently endangers everyone else.
In some cases, leaving a 3 second gap is going to cause more dangerous conditions than it alleviates. That’s especially true if you’re really rigorous about that 3 second gap and noticeably slow down to create a new gap when someone merges in front of you.
You don’t have to rigorously slow down though. Just ease it into existence. Its not a race. It might take a few seconds to replace that space, but thats fine. You don’t even need to hit the brakes 95% of the time. Just go a mph or two slower and let it balloon out over time.
The person behind you can usually recognize that someone just whipped out in front of you and will give you some grace time to adjust.
And keep in mind, if someone is merging into your lane, then whatever lane they came from now has additional space, which lets those lanes work better. Its a win win.
It may be “on them, not you”, but if it keeps happening because of the way you’re driving, then fundamentally it’s on you.
The fact is, if someone drives too differently from other drivers they make things less safe for everyone. It doesn’t matter that if everyone adopted their way of driving it would be safer. It’s still the case that driving too differently endangers everyone else.
In some cases, leaving a 3 second gap is going to cause more dangerous conditions than it alleviates. That’s especially true if you’re really rigorous about that 3 second gap and noticeably slow down to create a new gap when someone merges in front of you.
You don’t have to rigorously slow down though. Just ease it into existence. Its not a race. It might take a few seconds to replace that space, but thats fine. You don’t even need to hit the brakes 95% of the time. Just go a mph or two slower and let it balloon out over time.
The person behind you can usually recognize that someone just whipped out in front of you and will give you some grace time to adjust.
And keep in mind, if someone is merging into your lane, then whatever lane they came from now has additional space, which lets those lanes work better. Its a win win.