By EWAN KENNEDY
16 April 2007

Saw a couple of incidents recently that have made me wonder about the dangers of coming too close to friends and relatives.

The first was an obvious rear-end crash at the head of a major traffic delay that made me late for an important meeting. As I struggled to keep my cool as the cars in front edged slowly forward towards the site of the car carnage, I was surprised to see the two drivers involved in the crash chatting in a friendly manner to one another.

I reckon this was a first. I've witnessed more than one crash that has ended in flesh-to-flesh violence as an immediate follow up to the metal-to-metal contact. Which didn’t come as a surprise because we can all be bit precious about our cars and any incursion that reshapes their metal stuffs up life for weeks afterwards and severely damages bank balances.

Which made it all the more surprising that the two participants in this collision appeared to be such good mates. Until it struck me that they probably were good mates. In all likelihood one had been following the other too closely when something unexpected had caused the front car to come to a tyre-squealing halt.

Which brought to mind another incident. I had been leading the way to a hard-to-find destination, with a mate who was lagging too far behind and continually getting messed up by cars cutting in between ours. I muttered under my breath when, for about the 10th time, I lost track of exactly where he was. And then just made it through an amber traffic light that trapped his car.

Which meant that I had to stop on the other side of the red light and wait for him to catch up, yet again. Which didn’t do a lot for the tempers of other road users messed up by my stopping. It was legal, but it seems that people didn’t routinely stop in that spot so drivers regarded it as their piece of road.

There's a fine line between mates following each other too closely to stay in touch, and keeping a safe distance apart but causing other dangers on the road. Indeed, the line is so fine that the vagaries of traffic means that the line can suddenly cease to exist and an unpleasant impact becomes imminent if anything goes wrong.

Which set me to wondering just how many tail-enders are caused by people following one another to get to a difficult destination. We have all done it at one time or another, indeed as part of comparison car testing there have been occasions where I have been at the wheel of one of three or four cars involved in making their way through unknown territory.

Scary stuff, but I simply don’t know what the answer is. Mobile phones can certainly help, not to be used on the run, regular readers will know how much I hate the misuse of mobiles in cars, but as a way of getting back in together again by setting up a spot to gather after getting lost.

Other than that, it seems that good management with, perhaps, just a slight dash of good luck, is probably the best way to stay out of trouble.