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>TL;DR - Sometimes the 3 second following distance is just not enough even if someone is paying attention because they can only see the car in front of them.

Yep... the usual advice locally is 5 to 7 seconds gap for freeways and similar, before accounting for weather and other conditions. Of course, that assumes you can leave a gap without some bastard deciding to sneak in and occupy it.

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> without some bastard deciding to sneak in and occupy it

Unfortunately, this. It sucks to keep a larger gap, have some idiot sneak in, and now you have to brake to maintain the distance again, repeat. FWIW, I am very careful to maintain distance just for situations like the one in this post.

On this bridge you're always going to have someone occupying open space, but you can still maintain 5 seconds of visible leading distance. Alas, a lot of drivers on this stretch of freeway are insane.

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