The Dallas suburb of Grand Prairie has rolled out a new tool in traffic enforcement — a radar gun intended to catch not speeders, but tailgaters. Grand Prairie is supposedly the first city in Texas to use this new radar device. Previously, police had only their observation skill and judgment to use in determining whether one vehicle was following too closely behind another. The new device records the speed of vehicles that appear to be too close, as well as the distance and time between the two.
Interestingly, Texas law on the legal distance isn’t precise. The law says only that drivers should maintain enough space to avoid colliding with other vehicles, factoring in speed and road conditions when they make that determination.
One Grand Prairie police officer was quoted as saying, “It’s taught in most drivers’ education classes to maintain at least two seconds, and we feel like anybody going under two seconds is a violator. I go beyond that and set it for under one second. Last time, I was out for about an hour just stopping the ones under a second and still got five violators.”
Following too closely is quite dangerous, although in rush hour traffic, it’s hard to avoid. The safest policy is to try to maintain at least that two-second gap. You can check that by picking a spot on the road and counting the time between when the car in front of you passes the spot and the time you pass it.
