Drafting for economy

[voodoo22]

Originally Posted by talnlnky

unless the semi hits a wall, or flips on its side... yaris will stop faster.

Yeah, I wasn't at all clear with what I meant. What I meant was that saying a Yaris will stop faster assumes the Yaris driver is paying attention and starts to brake the exact second the semi driver does. From what I've read it takes an empty semi about 355 feet to stop from 60mph and a Yaris about 180 feet, but if you put good reaction time into the equation it takes a good Yaris driver over 200 feet to stop.

It doesn't take too long for an empty rig to stop in an emergency. If someone was drafting and not paying attention, it would only take a couple seconds of not realizing a semi was stopping to put a drafter in the morgue.

So many people tail gate or drive the absolute minimum distance back and give no thoughts to margin of error. That's why I will slow down and increase my gap in front of me often to try and compensate from someone driving too close to me on the hwy or even in the city.