I'm not going to labour the point too much as it's been well made by others, but at 30 mph, 12 feet is dangerously close to the car in front. I have to say I drive in heavy traffic every morning and evening and yes, people will cut in on you and fill the gap. Accelerating to stop them doing so makes an already dangerous situation worse. My answer is to drop back again to protect myself and my reaction time with some space in font of the car. The guy who runs into the back of you gets done for careless driving...period. Any excuse he can come up with won't be good enough! I don't accept the argument that because everyone else is doing it, you have to do the same. Tailgating is the most widespread and dangerous of a lot of bad driving habits. In extreme cases, when I'm getting badly bugged, I'll keep slowing down till the yoyo behind me gets the message and drops back. In defence of the original poster, I think his gap was rather more than 12 feet. At 30 mph he wouldn't have been able to stop without deploying the drogue 'chutes!!!

Oh well.. I laboured the point in the end after all!

The thing about ABS is that under normal driving conditions we don't experience it when braking. It's only under emergency braking that we experience it, and it's a strange sensation with the brake pedal pulsating under your foot. What it's doing of course is automatically and very quickly reapplying and releasing the brakes to avoid the last thing you want in this situation, a wheel lock up followed by a skid!!

There is indeed a feeling that enough isn't happening quickly enough! The truth is you're stopping much more quickly than ever you would without ABS and in a straight line unless you choose to steer out of it. There aren't any of the horrendous squealing of brake noises we used to hear with no ABS systems, perhaps that's the reason we don't tihnk enough is happening. I know what the poster meant when he said he didn't think he'd stop. The point is he did.