When me and my mate Lewis were driving our two cars from Melbourne to Brisbane via the inland highways, I insisted we keep a good fifty metres between us at all times. I'm paranoid like that. .
You have heard of the 2 sec rule? Following distance should be a minimum of 2secs behind the car in front?
Why, in most relaxed driving conditions that is the time the average person needs to react and respond to a situation. ie evaluate what they see and get foot on brake pedal. So if the vehicle in front of you jumps on the anchors(and doesnt have better brakes than your car) you will just avoid hitting them. Of course this doesnt allow for them actually hitting an object on the road and coming to a stop in less than their normal stopping distance.
At 100km/h, the 2sec rule dictates 55metres, so perhaps consider modifying your approach.
At 60km/h the gap should be about 33m, yeah I know, leave that much on a multilane road and all that happens is people cut into the space.
Its all rather silly to say that just because the vehicles travel nicely at 130km/h that we should increase the limits. The ability of cars to stop or go around corners hasnt unfortunately increased by this much, nor have human reaction times. Do consider the effect of speed for handling and stopping is related to the speed squared.
A car doing 140km/h requires double the distance to stop as one doing 100km/h
A corner rated at 70km/h when tackled at 100km/h require twice as much cornering force(ie friction from the tyres) This not only relates to cornering but the cars ability to swerve and avoid etc(handling).
We havent seen tyres and brakes improve by this amount in the last 40 years.
Our road tolls have decreased, due to improved laws and better vehicles, yet our road tolls are still significant. Why go back to the accident rates of yesteryear by decreasing the safety factors our vehicles now give us. Just appreciate the extra level of safety a modern car gives us, rather than driving it faster so we still only have the same level of safety of yesteryear.
Better roads as I have mentioned b4, with the highest km of road per head of population on the planet, how many of us are willing to put our hands up and put in heaps more tax to have better roads? Accidents are not caused by bad roads, they are caused by bad driving......better roads can prevent some bad driving causing accidents.
Why do we need to drive at higher speeds, where are all you people in such a hurry to get to? Unlikely that the government will allow any increase in highway speeds, purely from an environmental point of view. Speeds above 100 in modern cars create exponentially higher fuel usage/CO2 emissions. Perhaps some of you aren't old enough to remember when they put a 50mph limit on all cars in the US simply to reduce dependence on oil?
