How to Get a Tailgater to Back Off

[crazylegs]

I had this on Saturday.

In my spare time I volunteer with an organisation that provides first aid (we have personnel trained from First Aiders through to Ambulance crew) cover at events, anything from a village fayre all the way up to events with 1,000,000+ people.

We were covering a car racing event that has a section in it for young teenagers when the inevitable happened and there was a crash. We get the driver out who is 13 y/o and shit scared, and we begin to convey them to hosiptal on the back of one of our fully marked ambulances.

Kiddy had a suspect fractured leg.

Naturally I'm taking it easy, he's medically stable and although in some pain the aim of the journey is to make it as comfy as possible i.e. I'm not racing to hospital.

Jackarse behind me decides the best place to drive is 6 feet off my rear bumper while travelling at around 50mph. Yes I was slowing down more than is normal for corners but I didn't think the child with THE BROKEN LEG who was led in the back would appreciate being thrown about any.

Jackarse driver couldn't get his head out of his arse long enough to think about why I might be travelling this gently and blew past me on the first section of dual carriageway he could find flipping me off as he did so!

Tosser.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Could you have reported him? Isn't that illegal?

Of course, I imagine whatever he was racing to was far more important than anything you might be doing.

[crazylegs]

I was concentrating on the driving, and my collegue was in the back with the patient so I couldn't write down the registration, nor phone anyone.

Indeed, we must all make way for the ruler of the universe!

[Teskeria]

The solution is very simple and will never be put into action as about 90% of people would fail (yes I AM cynical about people! Aren't you?)

Forget a drivers test. Any 8 year old can pass one. Heck there is a 4 year old in India who drives his Dad's truck better than a lot of the adults around him.

A COMMON SENSE test. Simple. Easy. Pretty much Guaranteed to be failed by the majority of people. Esp. if you have a database of a couple thousand questions (not too hard) and each test randomly draws say 30 questions from the database. (not being a math person, I couldn't tell you the odds of 2 identical tests with 30 of 2000, bet someone here could though. I love this board!). Much harder to pass a test if you don't know what the questions will be until you get them.

[AriRashkae]

"There are 6 birds on a fence. You throw a rock and hit one of them. How many birds are left on the fence?"

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Depends. We talking crows or chickens?

[AriRashkae]

LOL Fair point. Our chickens are pretty stupid. Although they don't usually bother with the fence. They like the hay elevator better.

[Nohbody]

The solution is very simple and will never be put into action as about 90% of people would fail (yes I AM cynical about people! Aren't you?)

Forget a drivers test.

A COMMON SENSE test.

How much road asshattery is a lack of common sense, though, and how much is knowing they're in the wrong, but doing it anyway for whatever reason (mostly centering on having a vastly overinflated sense of self-importance)?

[ObDisclaimer: Admittedly I do tend to take speed limit signs more as advisories than commands. So you could say I speak from experience on the latter, though in a somewhat weak defense my speeding is more impatience than self-importance. ]

[RestaurantDude]

I had an idiot tailgating me on my way home from work the other day. I was traveling at the posted speed limit, and some jackhole decides to crawl right up my back bumper. I slowed down to about 20ish (posted speed limit on this road is 35, and there was NO other traffic) and flicked on my rear fog light. Said jackhole then made a rude gesture and took the next turnoff. Really? You are mad at ME because you were driving like an ass?

[CarcinogenCrunchies]

I was traveling at the posted speed limit, and some jackhole decides to crawl right up my back bumper. I slowed down to about 20ish

I do this sometimes in town, if I'm not in any hurry to get to my destination and the car on my ass is the only one following me. Last weekend my tailgater and I took a leisurely cruise at around 12MPH for several blocks. The "Sunday drive" is often underappreciated, I think.

[RestaurantDude]

I hate when people crawl right up to my back bumper. Even in my full sized car, often times i can only see the bumper of an SUV that's crawling up my arse, so it can be a bit intimidating. That being said, i am NOT going to exceed the posted speed limit just because some self-important jackoff in a rolling penis extension is in a hurry.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Today I had a very, very dim bulb tailgating me down a particular stretch of road that sees a lot of accidents.

I was driving The Big Green Bitch, which is an ancient green GMC Safari van that looks like it's seen some adventure in its life.

Tailgate Guy was driving a chopper. No helmet, even.

Now, would I even, hypothetically, feel that, if the guy hit me?

So then, after realizing that gnats are not scary when you are a battle scarred rhino, he swung out from behind me, squeezed into the next lane, and rode that guy's ass...who didn't give much more of a damn than I did, from the look of things. And even if he did, there was no place to go, traffic on that road is always bumper to bumper. And this is frequently because at least one lane is blocked by some dead shithead that got killed on his donorcycle for doing this very thing.

Two things, skippy:

1. Bigger things than you have smashed into the back of my van and I didn't give a damn about them, either. At least do me the favor of trying not to bleed on my turtle licence plate.

2. That road eats motorcyclists for breakfast. And lunch. And supper. I'm just sayin.' It's like the Bermuda Triangle for bikes, and that is no lie.

[Andara Bledin]

A few notes on tailgaters, drivers, freeways, and safety.

If you're being tailgated, your first thought should be safety. End of discussion. Who cares if the jerk 'gets away with something' or is 'wrong' if you're upside-down in a ditch and bleeding to death because you were too stubborn to give the douchewad the room to pass they wanted so badly.

If there is a lane that is meant to be for faster, passing traffic, use it to pass and then get out of it. There will always be someone who is unsafe, and it's in your best interests to let them be unsafe as far away from you as feasible.

Speed limits are designed either to cater to the lowest common denominator or for housing values. In many cases, the posted limit does not actually represent the highest safe speed for that road under typical conditions.

While speed plays a factor in the severity of an accident, it is rarely a causal force. The most common cause of accidents is inattention, or distractions. Watching your speed to make sure you don't break the law is just one of many distractions people deal with while driving.

THIS SITE has a lot of interesting information regarding speed limits and driver safety.

^-.-^

[Dips]

And that site is a political site trying to make speed limits illegal. Changes to the law are a fratching topic.

[otakuneko]

I've been tailgated plenty of times. From ricers, to the-reason-that-joke-about-porcupines-and-BMWs-was-invented. I've even been tailgated by a frikkin cop (trying to get me to go fast enough to cite me for, officer? And did I tell that tale here?), and chased by a drunk (who got his just deserts in the end. ) I also honestly believe that at least SOME of the people tailgating me were simply using me as a poor man's cruise control.

My response varies depending on what kind of mood I'm in. Quite often I'll ignore them to death, and just keep on cruisin' with my cruise control set. I might get over if I see an opportunity to, or if several people have come up and passed me already and I don't want to go any further over the posted limit--my limit's 70 or 10 over, whichever comes first, and if traffic in the left lane obviously wants to go faster than that, I'll move over to the right, except at night, when lights in my driver side mirror can be blinding.

Around here though, slowing down seems to be fairly effective at removing tailgaters. I've never tried the weaving thing though.



Did I tell y'all about the tailgating cop? I probably did, but I'mma tell it again anyway! So there!

One night on the way home, as I was driving down an access road bordering my neighborhood, I had some asshole riding my bumper. I was in a bad mood, so I set the cruise at 40, the posted limit for that road. The left lane was clear, he had no reason to be behind me that close. Still he stayed. So I brake-checked him. And not a wimpy, tap-the-pedal brake check either, but enough to make my Impala's nose dip and drop the needle a few mph.

At first, I almost freaked when I saw the big, bold, flourescent "POLICE" lettering on the side as he finally passed me. Then I laughed my ass off.

As for the drunk, I'm sure that happened during one of my hiatuses from the board, so here goes...

Coming home on SH360 from a friend's one night (and with another friend in the car) we spotted what appeared to be a highly impaired driver. The manner of his impairment, be it chemical, social, or just plain dumbassery, I'll never know, and don't particularly care. Being that the only available exit at the time was a road lined with bars, I opted for "the devil you know" and stuck it out on the highway with this asshole.

Not wanting to put myself at risk of having to react to whatever bonehead move he was going to pull next, I decided to pass him. 360's a 3-lane highway, my car's a V6, and his looked like just an average four-banger. No problem. Voo, and he was a memory, though I kept an eye on him in my rear view mirror. He was easy to spot, it being the wee-hours and all. Remarkably, he caught up to us without smashing into anything, and when it came time for me to exit, there was no traffic between him and me. He was in the right lane, where I had to be to exit.

He did not enjoy sharing the same lane with me! The asshat suddenly went from "amusing, but I'mma be over there..." to "RAWRWHRMRRGRGLGRGLGRGL!" , accelerating rapidly to get close on my tail, flashing his hi-beams, and in general raging at my being in his lane. In hindsight, as impaired as he seemed to be, I wonder how he managed not to rear-end me? I hopped back over out of "his" lane, but he followed me, so I hopped back into the right lane, and then into the newly-sprouted exit lane. He followed, all the way. Uh oh. Possibly-drunk road rager following me, and this exit leads straight into a light that'll be red, and while there is a right turn lane, the whole intersection's on an incline AND there's more traffic here even at this time of night.

I waited til the last moment, and got out of the exit lane. Amazingly he wasn't fooled. He followed. I continued on to the next exit, for a street bordering the south end of my neighborhood, as opposed to the north end at the previous exit. Conditions would be more favorable here if he followed -- gas station, 24 hour whataburger, and a less-busy intersection. I waited til the last moment to get in the exit lane, and sure enough he followed. Barely slowing down, I blew through the right turn lane, making the turn onto the cross street.

*SCREEACH! Clunk! CRASH!*

I made it. Drunk didn't. In my rear view I saw his car up on the island, with a brand new hood ornament: the pedestrian signal.

"Oh, fuck that, I'm outta here!" See-ya! Off into the safety of my home neighborhood... I donno what happened to the guy, but never fear: the pedestrian signal was up and operational by 2pm.

(What, you think I was gonna hang around to check on a guy who obviously had malicious intent? Ha! No way.)