Absolutely flabbergasting. You deliberately drive in a way that you know is unsafe, just to signal your displeasure at another driver’s legal use of the road?
Why not just stay back at a safe following distance until you can safely pass, in the meantime waving your middle finger at the other driver and shouting obscenities? It may not be any nicer, but at least it’s a lot less of a safety hazard to both of you and all the other drivers on the road.
I really can’t see that it’s valid to complain about any driver doing, say, 10 miles less than the speed limit, as long as the driver stays to the right and follows other procedures proper for slower vehicles. Highways are meant to handle traffic with a variety of speeds. Faster drivers have no right to expect that all vehicles on a highway are going to be keeping up with the average speed of traffic flow.
If you think that 10 mph below the speed limit is too slow and you seriously think that drivers should be prevented from driving that slowly, then you need to get the legal minimum speed limit raised. Certainly, unsafe aggressive driving such as tailgating slower drivers is not an intelligent approach to solving the problem.
You would certainly fail a UK driving test for going too slowly for no good reason. I’m not sure that the tester would accept “I was trying to save gas” as a reason. After all, if you can’t afford the gas, drive fewer miles.
It’s easier to set maximum limits on a road than minimums, but that doesn’t mean that you can drive as slowly as you like on a public highway simply because there is no specific law that prohibits it. It’s dangerous.
But American highways do have legal minimum speeds. Nobody here is advocating “driving as slowly as you like”.
Some of us are simply arguing that it’s legal and appropriate to drive a little bit more slowly than the posted legal maximum speed limit, as long as one observes the proper procedures for slower vehicles. Faster drivers should be prepared to encounter and tolerate a reasonable range of speeds on the highways, both above and below the speed limit.
If you are coming up behind a slower driver who is traveling at a legal speed and observing the proper procedures for slower vehicles, it is your responsibility to drive safely, either around them or behind them. It is not their responsibility to speed up just to save you from having to slow down.
I can’t tell if that’s what silenus meant: he seemed to be declaring that he would tailgate any slower driver who was “in his way”, under any circumstances.
AFAICT, that would include a situation where, for instance, silenus comes up in the right lane behind a slower driver who’s following proper procedures for slower drivers, and finds the left lane temporarily blocked by a truck. He seems to be saying that in such circumstances, he will simply tailgate the slower driver until the left lane is clear.
Of course, even if a slower driver is in a lane where they don’t belong and it’s possible for them to move over to the right, it still sounds like a pretty stupid idea to attempt to influence their behavior by tailgating them. The concept of “safe following distance” is still valid even when dealing with drivers whose behavior is annoying you.
The idea that ever having to slow down at all is a great inconvenience is ridiculous. You don’t own the road, you share it. Things happen, deal with it. If you’re trying to cruise at 80 and wind up having to swing into the right lane, don’t get pissy when someone uses an on-ramp to merge at the speed limit. That’s what the right lane is for. Yeah, it’s a pain in the ass when a truck is doing barely 50 up a steep hill and all the just at the speed limit drivers have to pass it and block the left lane but it happens. And yeah, the guy doing 5 under the speed limit in the left lane is an asshole but what’s the point in endangering yourself (and others) just to save a minute or two?
Yes. People who are driving slowly. What you would call drivers of slower vehicles. Is there really anything difficult to understand about that phrase?
Depends how fast the truck is going. In any case, even if a driver is truly going dangerously slowly, it does not seem like a good idea to compound the problem by driving dangerously close to them.
Just because it may work doesn’t mean it isn’t a stupid idea. silenus himself candidly admitted that he knows such tactics are unsafe. Deliberately driving unsafely just in order to express annoyance with another driver, or to try to shoo them out of your way so you don’t have to drive behind them for a few seconds, still sounds like a monumentally stupid idea to me.
You people are very funny. Come to Bangkok – or anywhere else in the Third World – and I’LL show you some weird driving. I have a Thai driver’s license, but there is no way I would drive in Bangkok, although I know farangs (Westerners) who do. But my best friend in Thailand, who lives upcountry, owns a pickup and a car, and he says there is no way HE would drive in Bangkok, either. And it can be pretty hairy upcountry even. Regardless of what the regulations, which do exist, say, the larger vehicle has the right of way in all circumstances, and heaven help you – because the police won’t – if you do not recognize this. Even walking can be hazardous, because motorcycles routinely take to the sidewalks.
But I’ve not seen quite anything like in Phnom Penh. There must be a functioning traffic light somewhere in the city, but I’ve not seen one. At major intersections, vehicles from all directions all go through at the same time, performing this bizarre dance of collision avoidance. It can be quite disconcerting when your driver plunges right into the middle of it until you get used to it.
There is a thing a friend does to people who drive too slow. It is wrong, but it is amusing as hell. He’s got a semi-aged Jeep, and he passes them. Then he gets in front of them and slows down. Clearly, it can not be wrong to drive slower than the speed limit. Five miles an hour seems fine to him. They’re clearly tailgating, too.
This works fine so long as the highway never sees more than moderate levels of traffic. Beyond that, it invites backups, anger, passing on the right (since that’s the only open lane), and general strife.
The European scheme works best here: keep right (in England, left) except when passing. When you move into the left lane, have a plan for returning to the right one. Stay alert for overtaking traffic. Never be passed on the right (IOW, if the lane to your right is open, be in it).
Completely different scenario. I merge, and patiently wait until traffic is such that I can pass safely on the left. You are slow, but so is the truck. OTOH, if you are tooling along in the left lane, going 10 miles an hour under the speed limit, and I am approaching from behind, and you make not the slightest effort to clear the lane, we are going to have an “encounter.” Usually with a few flashes of the headlights to wake you up.
Actually, they’re often the same. If you have a one-lane bottleneck that allows, say, 50 cars/minute to pass, then that’s the controlling feature. Assuming cooperative merging, the delay for any given driver will be determined by how many cars are in front of him, not by where the merge to a single lane takes place.
Well, I can totally see flashing your headlights to get the attention of somebody in front of you who’s going under the speed limit in the left lane. I don’t see anything wrong with that; people should not be driving slowly in the left lane, and if they do, someone should alert them that it’s a problem.
But why on earth would you pull a dangerous trick like tailgating them, when you admit yourself that you know it’s unsafe? Is scaring or annoying a driver who’s doing something wrong really important enough to you to exacerbate an already dangerous situation with a reckless move like that? Does your glee at retaliating against a stupid driver really outweigh your desire for maximum safety?
Yeah, that’s another thing. I suspect that the self-appointed Wheeled Avengers who pull this sort of stunt, to “punish” drivers who are doing something they feel is wrong, usually imagine that their “punishments” are accomplishing much more than they actually are.
Somebody who is driving slowly and responsibly in the right lane, as in your case, generally will not really care if somebody else decides to drive more slowly in front of them. If a Wheeled Avenger actually cuts them off, or drives at erratic speeds in an attempt to make them tailgate, the original slow driver will probably not be inspired to think “Hmmm, what was it that I did wrong that prompted this other driver to chastise me in this way?” They’re much more likely to think “Gee, what an asshole—or maybe he’s drunk. Oh good, there he goes speeding off ahead. Glad to see the last of him.” As you note, the patience of the Wheeled-Avenger types in attempting to “punish” somebody for the sin of causing them to slow down so as not to rear-end the car ahead is usually not very extensive. If they had any patience to speak of, they wouldn’t be getting so infuriated in the first place just because they had to slow down for a few seconds.
Somebody who is driving slowly and irresponsibly in the left lane, on the other hand, might well be actually impaired in some way. I understand it’s a pretty common thing among elderly drivers who are losing their grip to go more slowly than they mean to and to get into the wrong lane and so forth. Somebody like that is not going to be taught any effective lesson by having a Wheeled Avenger zoom up behind them and try to crawl up their tailpipe. If they’re really impaired they might not even notice, and if they do notice they’re liable to react unpredictably, at which point the Wheeled Avenger will likely regret being so close to them.
The rule still holds that when you’re around somebody who’s driving badly, in whatever way and for whatever reason, the safest thing to do is to give them as wide a berth as possible and get away from them as soon as you safely can. Trying to have an “encounter” with them in order to change their behavior may soothe your vindictive irritation, but it is not a smart idea as far as safety is concerned.
NO SHIT!!! Never fucking fails when I’m heading to Seattle or most recently Leavenworth I get outside of Yakima and some fucking idiot trucker traveling 35MPH up a grade pulls out to pass another trucker going 30MPH on a 70MPH highway! Just slow the fuck down or your going to fucking kill someone.
