Usually when someone tailgates me I slow down about 5 miles an hour. The tailgater usually learns that to get what he wants, speed, he must stop tailgating me. When he does, I reward him by speeding back up. It’s worked every time I’ve done it.
See that row of buttons on the dashboard, the ones you have never used? Third from the right is a rear oil slick. He gets too close, you press that one.
Whatever you do, however, don’t press the red button. Please, don’t press the red button.
Whaddaya mean, your car doesn’t have these buttons. I thought they were standard issue.
warning: don’t try this at home as its dangerous and may cause a pile-on
If I have my headset on, I hit “#77” and report to the state police the aggressive driver’s plate number, their car color & make, the highway I’m on, the direction being travelled, and the nearest mile marker. I figure that if its an emergancy and their arm has been cut off and if they need to get to the ER to live, the troopers will provide the fastest and safest escort.
If they aren’t bleeding to death, the trooper can also counsel safe driving habits and recomend anger management where appropriate.
Wow, I didn’t expect my little rant to turn into a learned discourse on highway safety. This is so … unfulfilling.
But I’ll play. Chez, your advice is considered incorrect by traffic safety experts. The problem is that it may be interpreted as a direct challenge to the tailgater, who may respond with more aggressive behavior, including tailgating even closer. Remember, the tailgater thinks that the tailgatee is in the wrong.
The most common (and, IME, most effective) advice given on deterring tailgaters is to take your foot off the brake for a five-count, without hitting the brakes, then accelerate back to your original speed. This should be done at 15- to 30-second intervals.
The idea is not to challenge the tailgater, but to make the tailgater think that you are an erratic driver - that he/she will not be able to predict what you are going to do next. As I’m sure you are aware, erratic drivers make other drivers nervous, and we want to give said erratic driver extra space. The tailgater should respond the same way and back off.
Sua
I don’t brake or even slow down for aggressive drivers of any sort anymore, although I don’t speed up either.
Why? Because they are only committing vehicular assault (IMO) when they are close enough that braking or even slowing down will probably cause an accident if the drivers are not paying extremely close attention.
And if they’re not that close, why penalize them for not being as bad as the other drivers?
Although, I admit I did do the brake-tap recently to a moderately-tailgating driver. Not only was I in the left-hand-lane with the right lane totally taken up by slower cars, the lane was taken in front of me as well. Not only did the truck tailgate me (closer than average for rush hour but not a foot away from me either,) it set its light on “flash” so they kept going on and off. The funny thing is, when I tapped my brakes without decelerating, the truck swerved violently and almost flipped over, even though, in situations when I’m following a vehicle as closely, if that vehicle slows down I dont even have to tap the brakes, merely let off the gas. That’s when I knew I should stop doing that, because while I don’t care about that driver, if they flip over they could cause damage to other drivers behind them.
Actually, many people probably don’t have any idea of what constitutes an appropriate following distance.
That’s good to know, although I’m guessing you mean “take your foot off the gas for a five-count,” right?
Daniel
Would be fine except the OP is in the act of overtaking the right hand lanes trafic, so this would be counter productive.
I wish people were taught here that overtaking should be done quite rapidly, you realy should be at least 10mph faster than the car(s) you overtake, and preferably quite a bit more. If you want to go 70 and the car infront is going 65, then overtake them at about 80mph don’t just switch to a left lane and keep going 70 until you finally pass the obstruction.
However, a lot of the time going 80 will put you in too much danger of being caught for speeding. Just because some people want to take that chance doesn’t mean that those that don’t should be content with going 65.
I say this even though slow drivers are even more an annoyance for me than aggressive tailgaters (even though the latter are, per driver, are more dangerous). The ones you talk about are there, too, and have only gotten worse with the advent of cruise control.
Point taken Sua.
To be candid, I arrived at my solution years ago while being tailgated on a busy motorway in the rain. It seemed to do the trick both then and since, but your alternative suggestion seems more grounded in traffic safety logic.
My husband tells me that Young Drivers of Canada Defensive Driving Training taught him that the proper response to being tailgated aggressively was to make more room in front of you so you don’t hit the car in front of you when you are hit from behind.
And I agree with those who are saying that people don’t know what a safe following distance is. I would also bet money that most drivers don’t know what the speed limit is on any given road, what the road signs are around them, whether they are in a playground or school zone, if that zone is currently in effect, or pretty much any damned thing that’s going on around them.
Dammit - keep forgetting the rest of my thoughts.
You make room by gradually slowing down, not by braking hard. If you’re hit from behind, you might not be at fault, but drivers are always responsible for avoiding accidents if they can.
Yep. Damn gerbils.
May I quote this in my sig? Please? 
If you need to get to the hospital that bad, call a damn ambulance.
Please cure my ignorance, what is an HOV? (hominid owned vehicle, homicidal owned vehicle…???).
I’m assuming it means some sort of multiple passenger ridesharing type lane only during rush hour? But what does the H stand for?
Never mind!
A rather unscrupulous friend of mine once rigged up his break lights to come on with a flip a switch on his dashboard. The lights still responded to normal breaking, but when he had a tailgater, he could scare the living shit out of them without risking the tail end of his car.
Even worse, I once worked with someone who bragged about how he would just downshift a gear or two, so that the brake lights wouldn’t come on but his car would slow dramatically (probably tearing the hell out of his clutch/tranny in the process, which made very little sense to me, as he really seemed to love his car) and the tailgater behind him almost piled into him a couple of times, swerving or locking up the brakes to avoid rear-ending said coworker :eek:. He seemed to take great pleasure in doing that, even though I was guessing he was gonna get nailed some day and he also seemed to love his car more than most people love their kids/pets. Maybe he was thinking about winning some million dollar lawsuit, I dunno.
(bolding mine)
But you didn’t see a stray animal. Since when did it become acceptable to lie about an accident?
No one should be tailgating. But, purposely causing an accident where innocent people could be hurt and then lying about it seems to be at least as bad behavior as tailgating.