This works at night fairly well. In my car when a tailgater is blinding me with his headlights, I simply adjust all of the mirrors to where they reflect back at him.
In my truck however, I have installed a couple of halogen floods as cargo lamps. Kinda like the extra driving lights you see on lots of vehicles except these are directed towards the back.
They assist me when backing trailers, loading and unloading, work lights etc. They are wired into a toggle switch under the dash and can be turned on at any time.
What I don’t understand is why anyone would encourage validation of tailgaters, who are committing dangerous illegal acts, by capitulating to their demands. That will only encourage them to act again, and perhaps escalate. Doesn’t someone need to indicate to them in some manner that their actions are wrong?
Personally, I hope I have the courage someday to just call the state troopers, so these criminals will be removed from my driving experience. Until then, I’ll be looking into the prices of trunk-mounted canons.
I found my passenger side windshield wiper overshoots, so I adjusted it a bit. It now shoots so that a person less than two feet behind me will get hit right on the drivers window. About in the space a normal persons face would be if the windshield was not there. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. Most of the time they turn on their windshield wiper for a few mins, until it hits them that it is a bit TOO accurate, then they smarten up and back off.
I get a lot of dirty looks, but nobody has ever tried to fight me over my little solution. Of course I am pretty muscular and have a shaved head/goatee thing going on, which seems to intimidate some people for some reason.
Get all your LED Message Board needs fulfilled here. This would fit nicely on the back of your backseats just inside your rear windshield. Mrs. Dante has forbade me to get one…
When I moved, I had a trailer hitch installed which sticks out about a foot. One time I drove through a congested area where a women’s soccer game was taking place, and event organizers were directing traffic. When my lane came to a stop, the car behind me smacked right into my trailer hitch and put a big hole in his front bumper.
All it did to me was scratch some crome off my hitch, so I didn’t even bother calling it in. Dumbass insurance company probably would of tried to make me pay for damages anyway.
I kept the trailer hitch for a while, but kept banging my shins on it every time I unloaded something. I took it off. Too bad, it makes an excellent antitailgating tool.
Years ago I had a buddy who was into car stereo’s and electronics. He bought a little sound effects box from Spencer’s. It had several cool sounds. Push a button and you hear a few seconds of a police siren. Another and you’d hear .38 firing a couple of shots. Another and you’d hear a machine gun, etc. However, the sounds didn’t have volume to them.
My friend solved that problem. He took the sound output from the box and ran it through an amp. The output from that he ran into some speakers mounted under the hood and in the trunk. With the box mounted on the dash the machine gun button would rattle the windows.
Amazing how the sounds of a police siren or a machine gun would cause people to behave.
I am always getting tailgated coming out of a school zone near my house. Last fall I had the requisite tailgatter on my ass, I could hear his Booming Bass, but could barely see him out the rear of my 4WD Suburban, which has pretty good ground clearance. As he was distracting me, I didn’t notice the piece of firewood in the roadway ahead of me until I was upon it. From driving around on my land I knew I’d clear it. I didn’t want to slam on the breaks and cause him to hit me, so over it I went. Ha! His bright yellow front spoiler got creamed by the log, and his car bounced over it as well, like a dog hunching it’s bitch. The guy’s face was priceless. Ahh, a great memory!
Personally, after having read this thread, and all of the thousands of other tailgating threads here on the SDMB, I’ve reached the following conclusions…
(1) Road Rage, in all of it’s manifestations is 100% fueled by ego, and silly people doing doing silly things and being determined to have the last word… just plain stupid if you think about it.
(2) I’d rather be meek and mild, and pull over and let someone pass (if possible) than do anything else. That includes running the risk of escalating things and getting into a road rage situation.
(3) My 15 month old daughter is the most important thing in my life (along with Mrs Boo Boo of course). I’m happy to let everyone in the world pass me and run the risk of a speeding ticket as they storm off into the distance.
(4) You just never know when you’re going to run into a car full of louts. It’s weird, and very sad too I guess. Last Christmas, I was just sitting at the lights minding my own business and these 4 guys in their early 20’s were screaming every possible profanity and insult at me from the car to my right, just 4 feet away. I never once looked, and I never once reacted. After 60 seconds of it they gave up and then they kinda went sheepish when they realised my total lack of reaction had allowed them to look pretty fucking weird to all the other road users. And my crime? Just being a 41 year old guy sitting in a Lexus. The message here is that highly strung idiots are every where, and the last thing they need is more fuel to go loopy I reckon.
Whenever possible I always try to let them pass…I don’t wan’t some jackass driving that close behind me. You know what though, sometimes they just won’t pass, even when they have the room to do so.
I was driving out to my parent’s house a few yeas ago on a two lane road. There was a guy behind me in a beat up truck so close that I couldn’t even see his headlights. Tap the brakes…nothing (he probably couldn’t even see my tail lights anyway). I moved to the other lane to let him pass and he follows me over. I tried this agian and he did the same thing. Time to try slowing down. That just got him honking at me and giving me the finger. I finally had to turn off onto a side street to get away from him. What is the point of doing shit like that?
A few months ago, I was driving to a town about 50 miles away to visit a friend. As I’m cruising down the freeway, I had to move into the left lane to pass an 18 wheeler. As soon as I did, an SUV full of kids came flying up behind me, and rode my tail. Again, there was an 18 wheeler in the next lane, and given that I had already seen 3 speeding traps that day, I wasn’t going to hit the gas. I was stuck where I was. I finally get past the truck, and move over, and the SUV flys past me. About 30 seconds later, and cop with sirens on flys past me. It was a wonderful thing to see the SUV on the side of the road a minute later. Still makes me smile.
My solution for tailgaters and other road animals is, alas, imaginary.
Usually it’s one of two plots. Both of which I thought of while a teenager driving in Eastern Mass. The first, which would have been more difficult to engineer, would be to mount a paintball gun on the rear of my stationwagon, with a fixed aiming point - about 20 feet behind my rear bumper. Or smack in the middle of some asshat’s engine hood if he’s tailgating one carlength behind me. For obvious reasons, this manner of excalation doesn’t appeal to me as a real solution.
My other plot, which I researched enough to price the hard-to-find part, was to buy a used, and spiked, .50 cal machinegun from an Army-Navy store, and hard mount it over the center of the roof, facing forward. The main reason I didn’t actually build it, is that I remain 100% convinced that while it is not illegal to mount scrap metal of any shape on one’s car, it would still be getting me pulled over each time I cross into a new jurisdiction. I never have gone through with this plan, but it does console me when dealing with idiots on the road.
In absence of any other plan, my usual response to tailgating is to simply allow my car to coast down to a slower speed - no hitting the brakes, just easing off on the gas. It works 99% of the time, too: either they back off, and I speed back up, or they pass. If that doesn’t work, I pull over.
You know what bugs me almost as much as tailgaters? The self-righteous people that always have to come into threads like this and tell the rest of us to just calm down and let them pass. You know what? THEY DON’T PASS. THEY HAVE NO IDEA THEY’RE DOING ANYTHING WRONG
I’m a good driver; I know what I’m doing, and I drive defensively at all times. I don’t suffer from road rage (much), I don’t speed, I stay in the right lane except to pass, and I STILL HATE TAILGATERS!!! I don’t want to drive in the dangerous situation that they create by following too closely; I don’t want my three year old car smashed, I don’t want to deal with insurance companies and waste my time in police stations reporting stuff, I don’t want to deal with autobody shops and mechanics. I don’t want my back and neck screwed up even more than they already are, so I can’t work for a living and have to fight with the insurance companies even more. I don’t want someone to create all of these problems in my life just because they can’t drive a safe distance behind me, but there’s NOTHING I CAN DO ABOUT IT. I can drive as safely and properly at all times as humanly possible, and I can’t do a damned thing about all the saftely hazards around me. So, yeah, I get a little worked up about tailgaters. I’m afraid of them.
My experience leads me to believe otherwise; if you slow down and allow them to pass, they nearly always will; does it have to be self-righteousness to advocate saving your own skin?
I hate tailgaters and can’t understand the mentality. Saturday I had a girl tailgating me. I slowed down gradually so that she could pass, because she was obviously in a bigger hurry than I (there was a passing lane available.) She slowed down. I increased speed so that there was a good distance between us and then went back to driving the speed limit. She increased speed so she could tailgate. Finally I gradually slowed down to a speed where she got bored and passed. And I watched her rapidly approach the car in front of us until she was tailgating him. I just don’t get it.
For what it’s worth, that’s my experience too. Yeah, it sucks to reward people for their jerkish behaviour. It feels crappy to capitulate to unreasonable demands. But sometimes it’s best to let the other guy feel that he’s emerged as the alpha dog. Especially when all it costs you is a a few seconds of your time and you’ll most likely never have to deal with that person again.
I think you’re absolutely right here. And the comment applies in general – perhaps 99% of drivers feel that they’re in the right 99% of the time. Which is why it’s frequently a bad idea to punish/retaliate against folks who have done something wrong on the road. Because then they think that THEY are the innocent person who is being wronged, and THEY feel justified in retaliating. etc.
My friend, I’d hate to find out you were lumping myself in such a group after having read my earlier post. Honestly, I was trying to be as laid back as possible when I wrote what I did.