How do you keep two cars together on a long drive?

Stop trying to. Give every driver the destination and the planned stops in their own sat nav, agree the stops in advance, and let the cars travel independently. Convoy driving - tailgating to keep the car behind in sight - is the actual danger and it fails at the first set of lights anyway.

What is the safest way to handle a convoy that gets separated?

Treat separation as normal rather than an emergency. Everyone drives to the next agreed stop at their own pace and waits there. Nobody speeds up, nobody runs an amber light, and nobody pulls over on a motorway hard shoulder to wait, which is genuinely dangerous.

Should the lead car be the fastest or the slowest driver?

The slowest, or whoever is least confident. If the least confident driver sets the pace at the front, nobody is ever pushed beyond what they are comfortable with, and the group naturally stays closer together without anyone straining to keep up.

How to keep a convoy together on a road trip

Two cars leave together. The first gets through the lights on amber. The second does not. Forty minutes later they are on different roads because one sat nav rerouted around traffic and the other did not, and someone is driving well over their comfort zone trying to catch up.

The fix is a mental shift: a convoy is not a chain of cars, it is a set of independent cars going to the same place.

Give every car the plan, not just the lead car

This is the whole thing. If only the lead driver knows where you are going, every other car is dependent and every separation becomes a problem.

Before you set off, in the car park, out loud:

The destination, typed into every driver’s own sat nav. Not “follow me”.
The stops. Actual named places - this services, that town, that petrol station - not “we’ll stop when we need to”.
Rough timings, so a car that falls behind knows whether the others will still be there.
Fuel ranges. An electric car and a diesel have very different stop patterns, and this is the most common cause of unplanned splits.

Screenshot the route and the stops. Signal drops out on rural roads and mountain passes exactly where it matters.

Never drive to keep up

The dangerous part of convoy driving is the social pressure to stay in sight of the car ahead. It causes tailgating, amber-gambling, and overtakes that nobody would make alone.

Agree explicitly, before you leave: if we get separated, we get separated. See you at the next stop. Say it out loud so nobody feels responsible for holding the chain together.

Two more rules worth stating:

Slowest driver leads. Counterintuitive but it works: nobody is ever straining to keep up, and the group holds together naturally.
Never wait on a hard shoulder. It is for emergencies and it is dangerous. Wait at the agreed stop.

Talking between cars

Phone calls while driving are out. What works:

A group chat that passengers manage. Drivers do not touch phones; a passenger is the designated comms person in each car.
Voice notes over typing, because the passenger is likely reading them out.
One update per stop, not a running commentary.

If nobody in a car has a free passenger, that car simply goes to the next stop. That is what the stops are for.

Where a live map earns its place

This is one of the strongest cases for shared location, because the alternative is bad - a passenger calling ahead to ask where the other car is, at exactly the moment the driver needs attention on the road.

With a shared map, a passenger glances once: the other car is eleven minutes behind, so you order food now. Nobody phones anyone. Nobody speeds up.

It is also the one meetup case where the group is spread over kilometres rather than metres, so GPS accuracy is more than good enough and open-road signal is usually decent.

Where Nearby fits

We build Nearby, so treat this as interested.

The road trip fit is good and the reasons are concrete:

The pin is the next stop. Everyone sees the same destination with a live ETA, so “are we stopping at the services or the town after?” is answered on screen.
Everyone joins without installing. Road trip groups are usually a mix of friends, partners, and someone’s flatmate. The link opens in any browser, they type a name, and they are on the map - no account, no app store while you are already driving.
It expires. You arrive and the sharing stops. Nobody has a tracking arrangement with the other car’s passenger three weeks later.

Being honest about the limits: it needs data, and long drives go through dead zones - which is exactly why the agreed stops, typed into every driver’s own sat nav, are the actual plan. The map is the convenience on top.

For rides on two wheels, the etiquette is different and stricter; that is covered in group motorcycle rides.

The convoy checklist

Destination in every driver’s own sat nav.
Named stops, agreed before you leave.
Say out loud: separation is fine, see you at the next stop.
Slowest driver leads.
One passenger per car handles comms. Drivers do not.
Screenshot the route for the dead zones.

Nearby is free on Google Play, and the other car joins your map from any browser.