Motorists who drive too close to the car in front are the target of a campaign to reduce the number of road traffic injuries.
“Some injuries and subsequent insurance claims could easily be avoided if drivers backed off and left a bit more room,” said Brett Dixon, president of the Association of Personal Injury (APIL) Lawyers, a not-for-profit organisation, which on Wednesday (16 August) is holding its annual Injury Prevention Day. APIL is calling for drivers to “back off” and end the needless collisions caused by tailgating.
“Driving too close, or ‘tailgating’, is a bad habit of which many drivers are guilty. It is incredibly dangerous, as well as anti-social, and can be really intimidating for other drivers.”
“When in traffic drivers are advised to leave enough space so that they can see the tarmac between their car and the car in front,” said Mr Dixon.
“In the UK we have 50 per cent more traffic per kilometre than the European average* - this, coupled with bad driving habits could cause needless collisions, injuries which should have been avoided and claims on your insurance.”
Martin Milliner, director of claims at LV= added: “On a regular basis we see claims coming through that could have easily been avoided if only drivers had adopted a safer approach. With tailgating in particular, many of us have probably found ourselves in a situation where we might perhaps have been driving too close to the car in front or the car behind has been too close to your boot. Encouraging drivers to stop doing this and getting them to “back off” is something we believe is very important and we welcome APIL’s campaign to tackle this.”