Not only is tailgating unsafe, but it&#x27;s not possible to do it effectively.  Even if you are a super-skilled racing driver, the driver ahead of you isn&#x27;t, and he will slam on his brakes at the last second, forcing you to do the same, forcing the car behind you to do the same...rinse and repeat.  Or you will hit him, or the car behind will hit you, etc, causing another accident and another traffic jam.<p>That&#x27;s how the traffic jam happens in the first place.  An accident happens, closing a lane, but the impatient people in that lane don&#x27;t merge until the last second, forcing the people in the next lane to slow down quickly.  Some people in the next lane don&#x27;t leave room for cars to merge, forcing them to merge later, forcing them to do so at a slower speed, slowing down all the cars behind them in a cascading wave of brake lights.<p>What you&#x27;re imagining might be possible with cooperative, AI-driven convoys of cars...until a black hat breaks in to their software over the Internet and makes them crash.[1]<p>What helps is to provide a buffer in your lane by moving at a consistent speed, avoiding braking altogether.  Of course idiots are going to get mad and zoom around you once in a while, and that&#x27;s fine, because they will clear space behind the wave, allowing traffic behind to move more smoothly.<p>The bottom line is that you can&#x27;t control what other drivers do, and many drivers are stupid.  You can control what you do, leaving more space, maintaining safe following distance,  leaving room for cars to merge easily ahead of you, increasing your gas mileage by not braking, etc.<p>1: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;07&#x2F;hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;07&#x2F;hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-high...</a>