A recent survey conducted by the Walloon Agency for Road Safety (AWSR) discloses that one in four drivers fails to maintain safe following distances.
According to the findings released on Tuesday, 28% of the 1,000 Walloon participants admitted to purposively tailgating, to block others from merging in front. Similarly, roughly 25% revealed they occasionally tailgate to encourage the driver ahead to speed up or change lanes.
The AWSR stresses that such actions can potentially lead to serious accidents. In Wallonia, nearly one in five bodily accidents (18%) involves rear-end or pile-up (involving three or more users) collisions.
Of these, approximately one in six (16%) is directly tied to not keeping adequate separation, resulting in around 300 accidents yearly. Typically, these accidents result in more than 500 victims annually, including six fatalities.
Just over half (53%) of these distance-defying incidents involve two motorists, the report adds. A majority of these accidents occur on motorways, which have a fivefold higher occurrence rate compared to other road types (15% vs 3%).
Belgian Highway Code does not explicitly specify a safe following distance but advises drivers to maintain adequate space in accordance with their speed, allowing them to stop for any foreseeable obstacles.
In practice, drivers are advised to maintain a distance equivalent to that covered in two seconds. The rationale behind this, the AWSR states, is that "the brain requires a second to respond before the driver hits the brake pedal, and only after this time gap will braking truly commence."
On motorways at 120 km/h, a two-second distance equates to roughly 70 meters. To easily gauge this distance, the AWSR suggests the "two crocodile" method. This involves selecting a landmark along the road and starting to count "one crocodile, two crocodiles" as soon as the car in front passes by.
If the driver passes the landmark before finishing the count, they are too close to the vehicle ahead. In adverse weather conditions, the safe following distance should increase: "three seconds/crocodiles" on wet roads, and "four seconds/crocodiles" on snowy or icy surfaces.
