Tailgaters on the roads

The BBQ Pit
1

I’ll admit, off the bat, that I have a particular horror of tailgaters, because as an eighteen year old driver I was “pushed” into a speeding ticket by a Statie who rode my ass. (Honestly, we’re both lucky that this was before my depression hit. There is a pretty good chance I’d have gone for evidence of his tailgating by slamming on the brakes long before I got up the 65 he pushed me up to. I doubt anyone would have liked that scenario. Being right is often less than satisfying in a disagreement with cops.)

I was taking my parents to the airport here in Rochester at 5:45 this morning on their way to start a vacation. While driving there I got up to 62 mph, in the middle lane of the highway, and drove towards the airport. Here in Rochester, the highway around the city is actually two different Interstates, and where they meet, the highway splits, with a left and right exit, so if one is expecting to go the left, one doesn’t want to get over to the furthest right lane on the approach to that junction, as slower traffic is normally supposed to do. (Yes, I know, a rule of the road observed more in the breach than otherwise.)

So about a mile and half away from this junction, a vehicle gets behind me and starts crowding close. Now, in rush hour in a real city, I recognize that I have no choice but to accept that there will be tailgating. Hell’s bells, I’ve driven on Rt. 2 in Concord, for the section that has no divider between the opposite travel lanes, speed limit 45 MPH, actual speed usually 65 MPH, and had no real problem with the twits behind me less than a car-length behind me. However, Rochester does not have a rush hour. Rochester has as rush quarter-hour. And that rush quarter-hour is not at 5:45 AM. So there’s no bloody need to get within two car-lengths of the vehicle ahead of you. Especially not when the left-most lane on the road is clear and you could pass if you had a clue.

After half a mile of this twithopper getting closer and closer, I got fed up pulled over to the right-hand lane, and slowed down to 55 MPH. After all, if he (Assumed gender - IMNSHO most bad and aggressive drivers are male. Not all, but most.) felt that strongly about going along that fast in the middle lane, he’d maintain speed and pass if I got out of his way, right?

Wrong. Twithopper pulls even with me, and matches my slower fucking speed of travel for the next half mile. Leaving me the choice to pull ahead of him again, or to try getting back to the middle lane after he’s passed. So, with my father playing back-seat driver, because I’m in the wrong lane, I get truly fed up, speed back up to 65, and and pull back ahead of this arsehole.

Whereupon he returns to riding my arse.

What the fuck, is this guy a goddam proctologist?

Oh, just to make things perfect, he was going to the airport, too, so he had some reason to know, and understand, why someone going somewhat slower than the speed he wanted to go wasn’t going to be eager to get over the right hand lane at that point.

All I can add is that I’m becoming rather fond of LucyinDisguise’s comment from his driving related thread last week:

2

He slowed down when you did because he knew he could likely intimidate you into speeding by tailgating you, thus forcing you to run interference and be first in line for any possible speeding tickets. The way to deal with dickweeds like this is to just continue to drive slowly. They’ll either: continue to drive as slowly as you as they lack the balls to speed openly; get impatient and pass you and be on their way; or wait til someone else comes along that they can attach themselves to like the parasitic remora fish that they are and play their intimidating games with them.

3

Don’t be dissing the remora fish. It’s not a parasite in the true sense of the term, I don’t think. It doesn’t take nourishment from the sharks, directly, and does the shark no harm, either. I don’t know that a remora does anything beneficial for the poor shark (Egads, did I actually say that?) but it’s not hurting it, either.

The twithopper above, however, was not so benign. :wink:
Seriously, after we got past the junction that I had been worried about, I did go back to the right hand lane, and slowed down enough to make the bozo pull around. My normal tactic for tailgaters is to slowdown, gradually, and pull over if I get to ten MPH below the speed limit. I just hadn’t had the space to do that at this point, because of how the roads are laid out.

4

You are correct of course about the remora fish. :smack: I had momentarily forgotten that they attach by suction (strong enough for shark-hickies, I wonder?) and eat the sharks’ leavings.

Glad the tailgater thing worked out for you.

5

Had a tailgater following me this morning.

Slowed to a near-stop 3 times, but he never took the hint. He just blew his horn at me.
Just before I turned off onto a side street, I gave him The Finger.

Felt good. :slight_smile:

6

Really, is that why people do that? Geez, dickweeds indeed.

7

I used to think I understood tailgating. I confess, I’ve done it, and not just a few times, either: I have only begun to achieve the patient serenity that really good (as opposed to experienced-and-skillful-yet-dangerous) drivers have. I’ll keep trying.

But there’s a new kind of tailgater on the road that I’ve noticed only in the past few years, the kind the OP is pitting. This guy isn’t motivated by a desire to get where he’s going in a hurry. He may start out that way sometimes, but it seems as though he’s always sidetracked by the compulsion to do whatever best expresses his contempt for any other driver he meets. He’s the guy who tailgates when a passing lane is available, the guy who wants to drive at 70 mph when he’s behind you and at 40 mph when he’s ahead of you and at exactly your speed if he’s beside you and he suspects you want to change lanes, and has never seen any reason to dim his headlights. This isn’t even in the realm of bad driving any more: it’s simple, pointless aggression, and it’s a lot more dangerous than the plain old tailgater who was satisfied to let you get out of his way.

8

Yep, it’s a pretty common tactic among the aggressoratti. (That, and what The King of Soup said – I’ve seen plenty of that type, too.)

9

Or even worse, the person in the OP could have been an Obliviot who not only went the speed of the OP by instinct, but tailgated the OP because that was his normal driving pattern. Even more dangerous than most varieties of aggresive driving (i.e. ones that don’t usually result in road rage.)

10

Sounds like a run-of-the-mill control-freak, IMO.

11

My counter-tailgating tactic is to flip up my rear-view mirror so that I can’t see him/her behind me, engage my cruise control and ignore them.

12

Huh, I would think that the cops would be more likely to pull the second guy over, since it’s hard to get behind the first guy so the correct driver is pulled over. I’ve always figured, if I’m in the middle of a bunch of people speeding, I’m the safest one there, because how is a cop going to pull me over?

13

When I was in college I had to commute 3 days a week down a rural, one-lane road for about 45 minutes. The speed limit on that road is 45 (mph), but people regularly go 65-70 on it. Since the road is narrow and winding, I refused to exceed 55. There were barely any passing zones, so you can imagine the amount of tailgaters I encountered. My usual solution was to slow down until I felt they were a safe distance behind me (2 car lengths = 20mph, etc). Normally, they would get mad and pass illegally. Occasionally they would pass illegally into the path of an oncoming tractor trailer and have to swerve into the RIGHT shoulder to aviod being pulverized. That usually made me smile.

I put a bumper sticker on my car that says “I BRAKE FOR TAILGATERS” and since then the number of tailgaters I get has noticeably reduced.

–FCOD

14

Because on a highway, you’re more likely to get nailed by being the first car in line as you approach a stationary or oncoming radar vehicle. Even though the police officer can see that other cars behind you are going the same speed, he’ll still nail you because you’re the one he clocked. He won’t have any trouble getting behind you; all he has to do is motion you over or hop in his car and go after you with his lights flashing. The other cars slow down or pull over, and there he is, right behind you and fishing for his ticket book.

Also, it’s fairly easy to see a police car approaching in your rear-view mirror so not too many tickets come from being snuck up on from behind.

15

My theory is:

Cops will be more likely to pull the guy they clocked with the radar gun. The guy in front is more likely to be that guy. Ergo, the cop will be more likely to pull the guy in front.

16

I had a tailgator like this once, too. I figured he was a cheap prick, trying to save a few pennies’ worth of gas by “slipstreaming”. I let my car gradually slow to 60km/h, during which he could have gone around me in the fast lane at any time. When he stayed behind me, I slammed it up to 140km/h for several seconds, apparantly catching him by surprise because he fell behind and I didn’t see him again.

17

I can empathize with the OP. The Colorado front range seems to be the tailgaiting capital of the world. Even scarier when the spped limit on the major north-south highway is 75…meaning that people actually go between 85 and 90.

Hate to tell you how many times I have seen multi-car pile ups on the highway because not just one, but several cars were all driving up each other’s butts. Not too intelligent, if you ask me.

18

Would it be illegal to put one of those kaleidoscopic hypnotic rotating 60’s thingamys in your back window to mesmerize anyone who dares tailgate your car?

19

A friend of mine had a simple, yet elegant solution: he wired his reverse lights to a dash-mounted toggle switch. Tailgaters would instinctively and immediately respond by standing on their brakes.

20

This is an AWESOME idea! I’m going to do this, right now!!! :slight_smile: