Following Distance - Free Stuff That Just Keeps Giving

[T.W.R]

I had a bit of fun with one of my oppos in a plain car on the Shore a few years ago. Around 2001, I think.

The lasers we had at the time were ProLaser II. They measured distance, speed and time.

My oppo drove the plain car, and I sat in the back seat, pointing the laser out the rear window, measuring the distance in metres to the car behind.

It was a great way to draw a punters attention to the road rules.

Some plonker wrote to the Police Minister and complained about entrapment (which it wasn't), and the amount of paper we had to write to explain the situation basically caused us to give it up as an idea.

Worked a treat though.

Sounds like when speed cameras were first getting used and the boys in blue set one up in a wrecked car on the back of truck on Marshlands road
A lot of crap went down over that because dweebs were calling unfair & underhanded.
Bit like when the old man & his partner caught & ticketed Tino Tabak speeding on his pushbike, that got dragged out because claims of unfair prosecution.

Apart from the obvious penalties etc for hitting someone from behind if an accident occurs from following too closely it'd be a pretty hard thing to police.
Though with current technology it wont be long till someone modifies a system that can use backing cameras & parking assistance systems in cars to either record close calls or act like a proximity alert similar to the blindspot/ cross-traffic system some modern vehicles use

[granstar]

that scenario was one of my first big scares on a bike, only difference being that i skimmed past the front of the right turning car and stopped in the ditch on the other side of the road, just as well i was on a trailee

Yeah well I once followed you some distance down the South Island and I can see how a near miss like that could've happened, with following too close it got big scary and near came close to a rear ender, but I hung on to that rear grab rail for life as tight as I could.