You are using the three-second rule to check your following distance. After the vehicle ahead passes a fixed object, your vehicle should not reach that object before which count?
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A.
One-thousand-four.
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B.
One-thousand-three. Correct
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C.
One-thousand-five.
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D.
One-thousand-two.
The answer is "One-thousand-three."
Use the three-second rule to check following distance. Pick a fixed object on the road ahead, and when the vehicle in front passes it, count "one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thousand-three." Your car should not reach that object before you finish the third count, which makes B right. A picks off drivers who learned a four-second rule in a driving school as a general safety buffer and carried the longer count over to the Illinois test.
The traps in the wrong answers
A. One-thousand-four.
One-thousand-four adds a beat to the manual's target. The manual does say to increase your following distance when the road or weather is bad, but the base rule for a good road in good weather is three seconds. This answer carries over the four-second cushion some driving schools teach as a general safety buffer, treating it as the Illinois base rule.
C. One-thousand-five.
One-thousand-five overshoots the manual's target by two beats. The three-second count applies to passenger vehicles on a good road in good weather. This answer carries a longer count taught for commercial trucks and tractor-trailers over to a passenger vehicle.
D. One-thousand-two.
One-thousand-two ends the count one beat early, at two seconds, which is shorter than the Illinois manual's three-second target and leaves too little room to stop if the driver ahead brakes hard. This answer applies the older two-second following rule taught in some driver-education courses instead of Illinois's three-second target.
This question tests your knowledge of Defensive Driving in Illinois. Source: Illinois Rules of the Road, "Chapter 11: Safe Driving Tips, Following Distances," p.83..
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