Quote:
Originally Posted by sombo
Texas law:
Quote:
§ 545.062. FOLLOWING DISTANCE. (a) An operator shall, if
following another vehicle, maintain an assured clear distance
between the two vehicles so that, considering the speed of the
vehicles, traffic, and the conditions of the highway, the operator
can safely stop without colliding with the preceding vehicle or
veering into another vehicle, object, or person on or near the
highway.
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They tend to keep these laws broad for a number of reasons. One of the reasons I believe (even if they will never admit it) is to use it in claims against people who rear-end others. They will use this, in this wording in order to justify that you were obviously not maintaining a safe enough distance to avoid the accident and put you at fault for rear-ending the person in front of you. Insurance fraud cases have happened using this where a car will suddenly jump lanes in front of you, slam on the brakes so you hit them, then claim you were tailgating. They will sometimes have a second person in another car that "saw the whole thing" putting you at blame. Luckily that's a scenario that is very rare, but can happen. |
My best friend is a police officer in a major city in Texas, and I've discussed this at length with him since my major peeve is being tailgated. He basically stated that the only time they "can" enforce this "law" is after the fact, when the collision has already occurred, the collision being prima facia evidence that the law was being violated. Sadly, in the case of motorcyclists that means the rider is usually dead, paralyzed, or otherwise critically maimed.
There's still no federal law on tailgating that I can find. Two decades ago here there was a law that stated two seconds or one car length per 10mph, I was very surprised a couple of years ago when a cop (not my friend) told me that the law had been changed to this "safe and assured" nonsense. I was showing the cop video I'd shot from my car of a roadrager running me off the road and tailgating me at distances of less than 12" at 70-80mph. The cop told me all he saw was, and I quote, "Erratic driving", and that there was nothing on that video that he could act upon.
If I had deep pockets to have a lawyer on retainer I'd be interested in exploring the "stand your ground" defense by interpreting someone tailgating me as using their vehicle as a deadly weapon to intimidate or threaten me, and putting a couple of rounds through their windshield in self defense. We already have precedence in this state of people being convicted of weapon offenses stemming from their use of their car to cause another person bodily harm, typically people on foot. I don't see it as much of an extrapolation to extend that to motorcyclists since they have nearly as little protection from vehicular assault damage as someone on foot.