No. I was not. I was just saying your statement (which is probably not what you do - you probably allow more distance) results in about a 1-second following distance at 70mph, which most drivers’ manuals would deem insufficient regardless of the vehicle capabilities.
In general I agree with your statement that using a following time is more appropriate than using a fixed distance. And that is what TACC provides - a following time.
More on topic for this thread, I was using following (time) setting 5 for the above video.
It is in the manual. And it is easy to measure the effect yourself if you doubt the manual.
Yep, I found it, thank you.
This is kind of an interesting subject. I am almost 100% positive the rule was 1 car length for every 10 mph. So I looked up what the 'woke' generation is telling teenagers.
The following distance is a space between your car and the car ahead of you. It is recommended to keep a reasonable following distance so you can safely stop in a case of an emergency, e.g., if the car ahead of you stops suddenly. A defensive driver maintains a safe following distance of at least three seconds behind the vehicle ahead and increases it depending on weather and road conditions.
Here's the problem though. First, in sentence 2 "if the car in front of you
stops suddenly. That is physically impossible. They may brake suddenly but they won't stop suddenly, unless they are going sufficiently slow that the coefficient of friction is sufficient to bring them to a jerking immediate stop, ~1 mph? The last sentence is silly. How is anyone, much less a 16 yr old, going to measure what a 3 second stop distance is. Seconds are a measure of time, distance is a measure of space. However, that is similar to the language in the owners manual. The only way that makes any sense at all is if stopping was instantaneous. Put simply, so long as the following car is going equal to or slower than the followed car they will never ever make contact. That one second you speak of really equates to reaction time. Can the following driver upon seeing a brake light have his / her foot on the brake w/i one second. If the driver is, at all, paying attention that's an easy bar to clear. Once your foot is on the brake all the following driver need do is insure they are going slower than the braking car in front of them.
My point in this thread was Teslas have enough smarts to know 1) how fast they are going, 2) how far away they are from the followed car, and 3) the acceleration relative to the followed car. So long as the acceleration is less than or equal to 0, it's all good. Negative acceleration is the technical term for what is popularly referred to as deceleration.
In a future highway system where only autonomous cars are allowed, the followed car could be virtually on the bumper of the followed car because the reaction time to a non-zero acceleration would be microseconds. In that prism following distance is a courtesy to the followed driver. I suspect in the next 12 months Tesla FSD cars will manage their own braking.
As for the verbiage in the owners manual, if that's what they meant, (the time it takes to establish a negative acceleration relative to the followed car) that is not what they said.