You left out the most interesting part of this. Why did she say she did it?
I prefer to use a cruise control in the right lane if traffic is light and the roads are clear. I should post about our recent trip across country and back. Amazing some of the asshats on the road [and some really nice people, and one baffling person.]
I’m with the OP, particularly at night or other times when it’s dark (early winter mornings, for example), and the headlights of the idiot on my port stern are shining in my sideview mirror, blinding me (huge SUVs and giant F350-type pickups are the worst). I usually slow down enough for them to pass me, then I go back to my original speed. Until the next asshole does the same thing.
Once upon a time, driving was fun and pleasurable.
My wild-assed guess is that they are a bad driver - they haven’t taken any training, and they don’t know why what they’re doing is a Bad Thing. I think this is true of people who sit in your blind spot, too - I’m never comfortable when someone is in my blind spot, and I try not to sit in someone else’s.
The herd thing must be in effect when drivers all bunch up on the highway, too - I’ll go a little under or a little over what everyone else is doing, and viola! I have some room around me, which is the way I like it.
I can’t remember exactly. It was, i think, something along the lines of, “Well, we were just behind him for a while, and i thought it would be better to get past him.” I explained to her that there’s nothing wrong with wanting to pass, but that it is only really worth it (to us, and to the other driver) if we sustain a speed that will keep us in front of him permanently.
My wife is, overall, a good driver, and she understood fine the point that i was making. She just didn’t have much experience of long-distance freeway driving before this.
She may be a fucking fuck, but if you put up with that shit for an hour, you’re a goddam idiot, and a willing victim to boot.
It’s happened to me. It’s happened to everyone at sometime. Your job as a safety-conscious driver is to break that invisible rubber band. Worst case, you get off at an exit and then get back on. If she slows down to find you again, then get off at an exit and kill a few minutes; get some gas, get some coffee, take a leak, rub one out, whatever.
It’s pretty rare that you have to leave the highway to get rid of a remora like that, but it happens. Cruising at 78 MPH, I picked one up once, and he matched my speed down to 60 and up to 90. Pissed me off, but I only put up with it for a few minutes before I got off the highway and took a short break; five minutes later, I got back on and never saw him again.
My daughter is a newly-minted driver, and is still learning about freeway driving. At one point, she was kind of hovering next to another car. I pointed out to her that this was a BAD idea, and that she needed to either pass him or slow down and get behind him, but PICK ONE.
I think I startled her, but I explained this is both unsafe and annoying. I hope she remembers.
Even better are the ones that do it the mountains, is snow. It really seems to kick the “safety in numbers” gene into high gear. Little do they realize that if just one of you loses traction, they’ll take out the whole pack, like in a NASCAR race. I’ll be 200 yards behind, able to coast to a stop before coming up on the mangled mess.
I know it seems bitchy of me, but once when a driver decided to stick to me for a long of stretch of lonely freeway with several empty lanes with his high beams glued to my rear view mirrors, eventually I slowed down to a crawl to a point where he had to pass me and I did the same to him for a couple of minutes. He seemed to get the message fast enough. Next time I passed him he stayed well behind.
There should be an exam or something before people are allowed to drive.
I live in Northern Virginia and I see this kind of behavior ALL the time. I suspect it’s one of a few things. At night, I suspect it often has to do with trolling for cops. If you’re exceeding the speed limit by enough to get pulled over, and 78 would certainly get you pulled over by pretty much any cop, I think there’s the idea that they’d pull over the lead car and give them the ticket, or you can at least argue that you were “going with traffic”. More likely, I suspect the person is just lazy and using the lead car as pacing; I think they often don’t even realize they’re doing it.
I will agree that tolerating it is dangerous. When I catch someone doing it, depending on what my speed is, I’ll speed up or slow down a bit, so if they’re just keeping the same speed, one of us will pass the other. If they still keep pace, I’ll do so more noticeably so it has to get their attention and if they still keep pace, I make a conscious effort to get away from them by changing lanes or usually just slowing down enough that they pass me or, if I think it’s because they’re not paying attention, I’ll just pass them because I’d rather a bad driver be behind me than in front of me. Usually, though, after I speed up enough that they notice, it then kicks in that they MUST pass me, and then when I slow down again, they’ll fly by and maintain that speed, and then we’re separate and then, on a couple of occassions, I’ve seen them get pulled over after they floored it because of that.
Either way, it really seems like the whole psychology of people completely changes when they’re driving. The whole herd mentality and sense of anonymity just ruins our usual senses of interpersonal behavior.
yeah - I’ve had the sticky drivers annoy me before - I usually slow down - sometimes to a ridiculously slow speed and get them to pass. One time I was down to 45 before this girl passed me - and guess what? She was glued to her cell phone. Gee, I wonder why she didn’t figure out I was slowing down until we were crawling.
I’ve also had to just pull over before - listen to a tune, then get going again - far superior to letting them piss me off.
And this one time? This one time I pulled into an EMPTY parking lot (you know where this is going) and parked, then went into the store. When I got back out - you guessed it - some mini van parked right next to me. So close - I couldn’t open my door. WHAT THE FUCK???
Because sometimes the asshole just. won’t. pass. I had a pickup truck on my ass once in the middle of the night. I’m in a small, low car, and he’s tailgating me with his lights right at the level of my mirror. I repeatedly sped up to 90, he’d stay right there. Slow down to 30! On an Interstate! But he stayed right there! It took half an hour of that before I reached my exit and got rid of him. He just would not go away! At any speed!
My favorite story about a close driver was a person I knew driving in South Dakota on a two-lane rural highway who had a close follower at night. He’d speed up or slow down, but the guy behind him kept right up, with his bright lights on.
Finally he pulled over to the side of the road, thinking the guy would pass, but no, the follower pulled over too. So he got out, went to his trunk, and the guy behind got out too and asked if he was having car problem (good Samaritan?) He reached into his toolbox in the trunk, pulled out a hammer, and smashed in the follower’s headlights and then drove away.
At least I think that’s a true story.
:smack:
I must confess to doing something like this, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I was at a trailhead at Joshua Tree NP and parked inappropriately close to a large van (the only other vehicle in the lot) in hopes of taking advantage of the only shade available for miles. It turned out to be a lousy idea…the inside of my car was still hot as an oven when I came back from my hike.
What is UP with that? It’s not even mountain specific but any snowy driving. Even as a teen, it was immediately obvious to me that you do NOT want to be close to other drivers when snow is sticking to the road. Derrrrr.
And related to snow driving: it’s a rarer sight, but I do.not.understand it: in snowy, shitty road conditions, the driver drives with their flashers/hazards on. Wtf?? The first time I saw it, I figured they just accidentally set them and were oblivious. But since then I’ve seen more! Is it your way of saying, “whoa there! These are some dangerous road conditions so I’m telling y’all with my hazards!”? NO SHIT. WE KNOW THE ROADS ARE SHITTY.
And if it’s because YOU are so paralyzed with fear (entirely possible, since all the ones I’ve seen have been going mega-slow, white knuckles, etc) that you put your hazards on to tell others to put a safe bubble around you? DON’T DRIVE IN SNOW, THEN. YOU CLEARLY CAN’T HANDLE IT.
You do know it’s appropriate to put your hazards on if conditions are bad and you’re driving much slower than the rest of traffic, right?
Complaining about somebody actually driving properly is fucking weak.
When visibility is particularly bad people with hazard lights on are easier to see. I’ve seen it in particularly heavy snow and rain and have immediately copied the plan both times. This is an excellent use of hazard lights.
I will admit that if I am driving late at night and am particularly tired I will sometimes automatically stick behind the car in front in some bizarre autopilot mode. Usually I catch myself doing this within a few minutes and take it as a sign that it’s time to let someone else drive, and I sure as hell wouldn’t hang on the quarterpanel in any case.
But as a WAG I’m guessing that this is a tired driver having an irrational fear of being the only car in view and using you as a giant speeding metal safety blanket (ironically enough).
We wanted an new car, but we had an old Toyota that just would not die. I used to leave in the morning with “Bye! Off to work… unless I get a tailgated by a douchebag in a Mercedes. In which case, I’m slamming on the brakes, and hopefully totaling the Toyota!” “All right, hon. Hope you find one!”
WHY oh WHY did no one ride my bumper while I was trying to get rid of that car?
If you are the only one crawling at 10 mph (because I’m not talking about driving in monster blizzard conditions), then I think the last part of my post applies. True, I much prefer overly-cautious people like this to the morons who will blast on at 80 mph and ride people’s asses (and these morons are far more common than the overly-cautious).
Interesting. My experiences with the hazards users have been in not super-heavy snow conditions but I can see how with white-out conditions, it could be a benefit, yeah.
I’ve never seen it in heavy rain, but I’d much rather that than all the people who don’t turn their headlights on at all in rain since it’s daytime. MDOT has even tried to help with this, like the LED message signs that will have something like
WIPERS ON? TURN HEADLIGHTS ON, TOO!
No offense to MDOT, but that one just doesn’t have the panache of my personal favorite:
**FALL IS HERE
DON’T VEER
FOR DEER
**
