Happy December!

When you give a comfortable breaking distance as you tootle along down the highway behind a car, why do other drivers assume that you are, in fact, inviting them to cut in front of you? And what is it about the sight of that much distance that translates to these other drivers to mean your car is going slower than the other, when in fact you're going just as fast and merely just a safer distance behind?

Having driven waaaaaay to much this past month as we've crisscrossed the Midwest and South (with no slowdown in sight), I feel very qualified to pose these questions. So why?