everyone seems to be forgetting the second half of my post:
devil's advocate: if the crv knew he had a tailgater, that made it unsafe to stop, but he stopped anyway.
that said, cam car was following too close for wet roads. maybe even too close for dry conditions.
if i knew someone was tailgating me, i'd hesitate to slam on the brakes the way the crv did. the crv probably could have made it through the intersection before it turned red, but cam car would have probably run the red or at least still have been in the intersection when it turned red. in the states, you're technically still legal if you're completely past the stop line when it turns red. that's not ideal of course, but you can't be given a ticket for running a red light in that situation. red light cameras here are actually required to show two photos - one of you completely in FRONT of the stop line (where you should be stopping) while it's red, and another of you actually in the intersection while it's red. they'll usually also have timestamps showing when it turned red and when you entered the intersection.
but hey, maybe this was an intersection with a red light camera, and CRV didn't want a red light ticket so he said "to hell with it" and stood on the brakes.
regardless - i still maintain that the cam car was tailgating. even if it hadn't been wet/raining, he probably still couldn't have stopped in time.
as for proper following distance... a fellow miata driver and I were out having fun on some twisties. i specifically told him not to follow me very close because I knew the road well, he didn't, and there were some tricky turns that could get him in trouble - he was still a new driver at that point. unfortunately, he followed me too close into a decreasing radius turn, and when he saw me start to brake mid-turn (i left-foot brake on the twisties just like i do on the race course) he panicked and lifted then braked too hard, and spun out into the inside of the turn. he was very lucky that he ended up backwards between two trees, and that he didn't go 5 feet further down the road before spinning - he'd have gone down into a ravine. a couple harley drivers stopped to make sure we were OK and to help us get the car out of the sand it stopped in. tell you what, my heart dropped thru the floor when i saw him disappear into the weeds/trees in my mirrors.
Heading into that fateful turn - note the green tree on the right side:
After. you can see that same tree that was in the right of teh picture above.
needless to say, he was a VERY timid driver for the rest of the drive.
and today I am still feeling the after effects 
