I was reading through winter driving tips on the DOT website this morning, and I came across this little gem:

Leave room for maintenance vehicles and plows - stay at least 15 car lengths (200 feet) back and don't pass on the right.

Does this look familiar to anyone?

Remember the experiment with the dots they painted on the road, trying to get drivers to maintain a safe following distance? You know, the one in Lacey that caused gridlock and made Washington State a national laughingstock?

There are three problems I have with "stay back 15 car lengths". First, the drivers around here are generally not smart enough to count to 15 - much less estimate how long a car is... second, as we've seen, drivers in Washington aren't generally smart enough to realize that they don't have to maintain the distance when stopped. Third, 200 feet is probably too close in adverse conditions at freeway speed.

The preferred method is to maintain a safe following distance based on time. In ideal conditions, you should not be traveling closer than 2 seconds behind the car in front of you. If conditions are bad, maybe 3 or 4 or more... but never a static distance - you'd think the "experiment" in Lacey would have taught them this...

If the DOT wants to emphasize safe following distance, they should use space on their website to educate drivers as to the easiest and best way to do this... expecting drivers (especially around here) to maintain a "15 car-length" following distance is stupid - and its a lesson they should have learned the first time they tried it...