The OP didn’t have to ** ALLOW ** the dumbass tailgater to pass. The fucking idiot could have just done it. Good grief, the OP was being blinded and was driving slowly because he couldn’t see so the idiot behind him could have gone around at any time. The asshole chose to stay behind the slow moving car.
Yep, and those are our main roads. 
Based on the OP and the later comment that the tailgater passed at the broken yellow, I infer that the OP was deliberately impeding the tailgater. I further infer that the tailgater was eager to pass and did so at the first opportunity. Thus the OP could have allowed the tailgater to pass earlier. This is consistent with my own experience with tailgaters.
Admittedly, only the OP knows for sure what exactly happened. But it appears to me to be a classic case of punishment and retaliation on the road.
Please clarify your experience, if you please. Exactly which laws of physics are in play in your neck of the woods? What is it, exactly, that would prevent someone from passing another car going 15 MPH? A force field? Some voodoo curse? Do you think that the solid yellow line has some sort of special blocking power?
I ask because in the OP’s example the special force that stopped that jerk-off from passing appeared to be…nothing, since the guy passed the first time he tried to. The OP apparently did nothing to prevent this (e.g., speeding up). Amazing, eh?
The first opportunity the tailgater had to pass was when he first encountered the car. The fact that he did so much later when he first saw a broken yellow line demonstrates the warped mentailty of this psycho, one where it would be terribly wrong to pass in a no-passing zone, but A-okay to tailgate with highbeams at unsafe speeds.
But, again, can you clarify what horrible trick you inferred that physically prevented the tailgater from passing? When I slow down in response to a tailgater on a two-lane road, it is with the hope that one of two things will occur–he will realize his dickheaded tactics won’t make me speed up, so he either backs off or passes me. Either is OK with me.
And, BTW, I am a rather large fellow, and I still agree with the earlier sentiment: I am NOT pulling over and stopping, lest psycho tailgater read this as a sign to stop and fight.
Sure. (1) On most two lane roads, particularly if you’re in a no-passing zone, there is a speed that is slow enough to impede the driver behind you but fast enough to make it difficult or impossible to be passed. We’ve all been stuck behind such drivers. (2) On virtually all two-lane roads, it is possible to pull far to the right and either stop totally or come to a crawl, allowing the person behind you to pass.
Based on the fact that (1) the OP slowed way down, but didn’t come to a stop or a crawl; (2) the tailgater passed at the first break in the center line; and (3) the other facts presented, I infer that the OP slowed down to “annoying” speed primarily to punish and retaliate against the tailgater and intentionally did not give the tailgater a reasonable opportunity to pass.
I also note that on many many occasions, I have pulled over to allow tailgaters to pass without incident. This is unsurprising, since you are giving them exactly what they want. IMHO, there is a far greater danger of provoking an aggressive response if you escalate the situation by deliberately impeding the tailgater.
As I noted previously, if the OP did indeed give the tailgater a reasonable and prompt opportunity to pass him, then my assessment of the situation would be different. But I highly doubt that such an opportunity was given.
lucwarm, are you really that dense?
The tailgater in question already proved that his mean machine could go faster than 15 mph, why is it so difficult for you to fathom that he could not pass a car going 15 mph?
You are so stuck that Windwalker, found glee in slowing down so much, that you forget that the stupid tailgater chose to remain behind WW, for up to 20 minutes.
WW didn’t say he was trying to block the tailgater from passing, ala a NASCAR race.
How was he impeding him from passing?
As I mentioned before, if I came upon a vehicle going 20 mph below the speed limit, I would not stay there for long. The first safe chance I got, double yellow line or no, I would pass.
True that WW could have stopped, but damn, it doesn’t take very long to pass something going 15 mph.
Sheesh.
That bastard just threw a disco through my window.
Whether or not it’s possible to pass somebody going 15 mph depends on the road conditions and the amount of traffic.
Note that (apparently) nobody in the parade that formed had it within them to pass both the OP and the tailgater in one shot.
But let me ask you something: Do you or do you not agree that on a typical two-lane road, there is a speed that is slow enough to be annoying, but fast enough so that it is difficult or impossible to pass?
I’ll answer. No, I do not agree. In fact, let me state it more emphatically: This makes no sense at all.
All it takes to pass is the ability to go faster than the person in front of you. Period. The slower you go, the easier it is for someone to pass you. As you decelerate, it gets easier and easier for someone to pass you, and this is true all the way on the continuum down to where you stop dead.
At the point one is going 15 MPH, a person could fucking jog faster than the car in question. If someone refuses to pass a car doing 15 MPH, it ain’t because of some magical “no passing” trick the slow car is pulling.
Why in the world do you think the tailgater was somehow able to overcome the “obstacle driving” of the car in front of him when the yellow line permitted passing? What specific physical circumstance occurred that permitted him to pass where it was all but impossible before? Please explain. Provide details, that is; don’t simply restate your belief that this must have been so.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, IDIOTS. That happens all the time on the road heading toward my neighborhood. Two lane road, It does have shoulders, in the summertime, but very little now.
The guy in front of me was obviously scared to death of snow and ice, he was going a good 10-15 miles below the speed limit.
The idiot in the big truck behind me apparently thought that tailgating ME would make the guy in front of me go faster. :rolleyes:
I hope you had a chance to convey similar information to the dork who works with you!!! “Umm hey, bitch boy, in what world would you riding MY ass make the guy who’s really causing the hold-up drive faster”??
Sigh, the trouble is, that you can actually corner one of these idiots, and give them a piece of your mind, and they still won’t “get it”. You’re better off keeping your “peace of mind” and ignoring them. Plus, if you smile and kill them with kindness, it chaps their asses WAY more than if you get into a shouting match (or worse)
I don’t know what state you’re from, but in many states you’d be wrong. If where the OP is from is anything like our state, there are plenty of long DARK stretches of road with absolutely no shoulder, meaning N. O. shoulder. None. As in the white line is painted on the edge of the road, and the edge of the road is 2 and a half inches wide, if that. And…If the road has no street lights, the driver is going to have a hard time seeing a driveway ( if there is one on that part of the road), side street, or wide patch in time to “get over”.
The tailgater should have gone around him. Period. What was the OP supposed to do? Start speeding faster and faster until the idiot behind him was happy? I don’t think so. Showing brakelights and slowing down gradually is the appropriate response, it lets the person know they need to pass. I would have edged over as far as possible, stopped dead in the road and MADE him go around.
Emergencies are no exuse to tailgate, if you’re having a baby, a family member is dying, or you’re trying to get someone to the hospital, you can call 911 for assistance.
quote:
Come on over and I’ll show you 6 miles of road where each side drops off into a ditch, there AREN’T any driveways because there are no houses
Don’t know which stretch the above poster was speaking of, but I can name one with MUCH more than 6 miles of road. Highway 5 Alaska, between Fairbanks and Delta Junction. Highway 3, between Quartz Creek and Soldotna, and on and on. Dark, long, frost heaves up the ying yang. Earthquake damaged portions. Caribou herds deciding to run ALONG rather than across the road. Mountain on one side, rivers or cliffs on the other. (I know that looks like more than one road, but the main, the ONLY, highway in Alaska is the same one, it’s just numbered differently depending upon where it’s located within the state).
I betcha Montana, The Dakotas, Minnesota, Michegan, etc have many similar stretches of road, (except for the migrating caribou maybe).
Heck, when I went to my daughter’s wedding last year in Oregon, there was one like that that ran west toward the ocean from Tigard. No streetlights, only two lanes, and miles of road with no shoulder.
You can’t honestly be this dense. What part of slowing down, as described in the OP, WASN’T amenable to “allowing the guy to pass”??? He had plenty of opportunity, starting from when the OP first slowed down.
So, in your book coming to a dead stop is the only acceptable way to deal wtih a tailgater? On a dark narrow two lane road, this would be better than slowing?
We call 'em Dick Swingers around here.
As I said before, it depends upon road conditions. If 15 mph is so slow, it’s interesting that none of the folks stuck behind the tailgater were able to bass both cars in one shot. And not a lot of people can jog a mile in 4 minutes.
But look, if the OP in fact gave the tailgater a reasonable opportunity to pass, then my assessment of the situation would change.
**
Spare me your strawmen - I didn’t say it must have been so. On the contrary, I stated clearly that only the OP knows for sure what the conditions were. And in case you hadn’t heard, broken yellow lines are typically put on sections of the road where you can see far enough ahead to safely pass.
Gahhhhhhhhhh.
Look, is it your position that on any stretch of two-lane road, one can easily pass a car traveling at 15 mph??
Agree.
**
Me too, in fact I’ve done this many times. Note that the OP did NOT do this.
**
Agree. But as I said, two wrongs don’t make a right.
The OP was smart enough NOT to. Did you miss the part where he was on a dark mostly uninhabited road? Actually, I mispoke, the OLD me would have stopped dead in the road, and likely gotten out (if the tailgater had had a mind to argue) and told him off, but after a certain incident in my youth (I’ll explain at the end of this post), I’m no longer that brash.
Being in the same situation, that of having an unknown psycho on my ass with his brights on and horn blaring. I wouldn’t have stopped either. It would be stupid and careless, in the extreme.
You never know what that “last straw” is going to be that sets a psycho off into a “that’s IT” mode of death and destruction.
quote:
Emergencies are no exuse to tailgate, if you’re having a baby, a family member is dying, or you’re trying to get someone to the hospital, you can call 911 for assistance.
What the OP did, despite his PERSONAL and mind, PRIVATE feelings of “serves you right” in no way impeded or forced the tailgater into the position he chose. The tailgater did that, so there WAS no “second wrong”. The OP did what is recommended, and safest.
The OP DID slow to a crawl, something you’d said “it would be different if he’d slowed to a crawl or stopped,” but the tailgater STILL chose not to go around him.
So where is the “wrong” that the OP supposedly did? At 15 miles per hour, the tailgater had ample time, agility and opportunity to get around this person. If he was too stupid, or that bad a driver that he couldn’t figure out how to pass when the front driver is going 15 mph, it’s HIS choice and HIS idiocy.
And as many people have already said, police departments around the country recommend doing EXACTLY what the OP did do, and again, the fact that he took joy in it, does NOT = impeding the tailgater, the tailgater chose to stay there all by his selfie.
Now as to the incident in my youth which caused me to be MUCH more cautious with strange drivers?
Okay, I used to work swing shift (supposed to be 2 - 11). Usually we ended up working a lot of overtime, and I’d really get off work at around 1 or 2 am.
I was driving south on the Seward Hwy (anchorage), which is a 4 lane (2 lanes north, 2 lanes south) at about 1am. No one else was on the road, heading that direction but me.
I was in the slow lane, going about 65, which was 10 miles over at that time (in the early 80s). A little camero zoomed up on my butt and stayed there with his brights on, I slowed a little bit, and tapped my brakes lightly to let him know “IDIOT, get into the fast lane and go around, no one else is on the road”!!!
He stayed on my butt, so I slowed a little more. He stayed on my butt and flipped me off (it was summertime, so still quite light outside), so I slowed even more.
Finally, he zoomed around me, and then cut back over into my lane, INCHES off of my bumper. Not that I was worried about damage, I was driving a 1968 Riviera (a tank for those that don’t know), so he wouldn’t have done much.
He flipped me off as he cut me off. Now, the principle of the thing (IOW, WHY did he do that whole thing when he had all the room and road in the world), in addition to his bright lights, tailgating and flipping me off (on top of a much too long shift), just made me see red.
So I punched it, (430 4 barrel) and was up on his tail flashing MY brights and my turn signal (pull over jerk!!). He flips me off and tries to go faster (he must have been surprised at the speed coming from what had looked like an old luxury car :D), I keep up.
He keeps flipping me off. Finally he pulls off at an exit and finds an empty lot. I pull in and am out of my car and at his door in about a half a second.
The man gets out of the car and stands to his full height of about 6’4". Which doesn’t deter me in the least. I yell “WHY on EARTH did you cut me off when you had the whole road, AND I was going well above the limit, what’s WRONG with you”???
He answers “look, I’m the best driv…” And that’s the last thing he gets out of his mouth, what follows probably looks something like the scene in “Uncle Buck” where he’s getting chewed out by his girlfriend. The man is managing phrases like “yeah but…”, “I just…” “you can’t…” and so on.
But I’m furious by this point, and hell hath no fury like a woman cut off. Meanwhile this guy’s buddies are all hanging out of the windows laughing, which makes me even MADDER, because I don’t realize that they’re laughing at their huge friend getting chewed out by a little girl he outweighs by a hundred pounds and dwarfs by several inches.
I finally say something like “just MIND your manners”!! Turn angrily on my heel and get back in my car. In the meantime this guy walks over gets in his car and I can hear his buddies ribbing him from there.
They take off and I get back on the highway. About a half a second after I get on the road, I have to pull over. What a spectacularly stupid thing to do. These guys might have been, rather than good ole boys out for a fun night, and having a bit of fun at their buddies expense, a nasty bunch that could have raped me, ripped me to bits with no trouble, and buried me in a shallow grave.
After that, I kept my comments about other drivers in my own vehicle, as well as kept my interactions to a minimum. In this day and age, you can’t be too careful.
So the OP? On a dark stretch of road, with his MOM in the car. He did the right thing by NOT stopping and potentially putting himself and his mom in danger.
I thought you meant a Hummer!
Get it? Penis-truck? Hummer? BJ? Okay, bye.
To avoid confusion, I’ll point out my mid-thread change of username (from “Paperback Writer”).
**It’s interesting how? They were in a no-passing zone. It’s not a curious circumstance when the average person obeys the traffic laws. Most people do. What’s curious is an asshole who won’t violate the no-passing law, but has no problem tailgating at high speeds with his high beams on. The OP, who is the only one who was there, had that very same reaction when said nitwit passed him. This would have been an odd reaction if the OP believed he had effectively prevented the tailgater from passing for the 20+ minutes this criminal activity took place. If you’re going to form an inference from the OP’s contribution to this thread, what is interesting is that you would leave this out of the equation.
And, not unexpectedly, I see you’re not going to take a meaningful crack at explaining what sort of road conditions would prevent someone from passing a car going 15 MPH (yes, I was using a bit of hyperbole, but there are, in fact people on foot who could pass a car going 15 MPH). Unless, of course, you mean this:
…yeah, right. For 20+ minutes at 11:00 on a remote road, there was not a single opportunity to pass a car going so slow, a bicyclist could have passed him. And safety was tantemount to someone willing to tailgate at high speeds. Of course, that must have been it!
You know what? Perhaps we’re both showing our prejudices here. I’ll allow for that. You did not state that it was only possible that the tailgater’s way was obstructed; you have conceded the possibility that what is patently logical could have occurred (;)). I overstated your position, and for that I apologize. However, you are, IMO, making a rather selective inference, based on nothing substantial in particular, and one contradicted at other points in the thread.