What to do about tail gaters?

KEEP RIGHT EXCEPT TO PASS :mod:

Learn this and live it faithfully, and you won't cause nearly so many problems on the road. FWIW, i'd have tailgated you and flashed the lights and honked if you were holding up traffic in one of the left lanes.

Why wouldn't you just drive in the right hand lane if you're the slowest guy on the road?

That's just bad guyness.

 

What precisely do you hope to accomplish by doing this? Other than that quick rush of adrenaline/testosterone, I mean?

 

i don't get an adrenaline rush from that. i learned to keep the adrenaline and driving separate or else you cause accidents.. it's a visual middle finger without removing my hands from my wheel.

i'm not saying that i run the guy off the road.. simply merge back into the lane i was in at a decent rate of speed.. when you're going faster than a guy, there really isn't cutting off.. just quick lane changes... anything else is running the guy off the road and causing more brake lights.

fyi, i also check my mirrors.. there's probably a good car length before i "cut someone off."

 

So you're saying you were on lane 2 (out of 5!) and the slowest driver at the time, with everyone zooming pass you, yet you failed to pull all the way to the right as many states' laws require you do if you're the slowest driver? You're certainly at fault in this.

 

Be sure to temper your style before coming this far north. Some of the standard tactics down there qualify for aggressive driving (road rage) citations here, and are quite expensive. And because I-5 is a drug trafficking corridor between SoCal and BC, ...

 

Michigan law allows the driver of a car to cruise in any lane on multi-lane highway. Often the #2 lane is the one with the calm drivers, as in that lane they can avoid merging traffic and still leave the left lanes for faster drivers.

Tom

 

That's where I like to hang. I can't stand being in the lane with all of the merging traffic.

I do keep up with the flow of traffic though, but I still get tailgaters. They can go around me. If I am in the left lane, I will pull over if I feel it is safe, if they are too close to me, I do not feel it is safe. I'll wave them to back off and then I will get out.

 

Well, that's not consistent with many states, which have laws about how the passing #1 lane must be utilized and a driver can't cruise in just any lane they want. Some states specifically require you to pull all the way to the right if you're the slowest.

 

I don't mind the right-hand lane. Sure, there are the occasional
slow mergers coming in, or tight packs who refuse to break up
until right next to the on-road traffic. I regard those as part
of the game, an interesting challenge to smooth out and help on
their way. That still doesn't justify *anyone* tailgating anyone
else; as a merge sorts itself out people just have to *wait* until
they achieve proper spacing to come up to speed, and they can try to
jump over a lane or two if that's what they want, etc. In the midst
of this I drop maybe 5 - 10 mph for a few fleeting seconds and come
right back up to where I was shortly thereafter ... what did I just
lose, all of 8 seconds in my travel time? Times ten or twenty
on-ramps worth over an average trip, assuming they *all* had heavy
incoming flow? BFD. I don't care if I'm already late; I will not
tolerate close proximity to the front or the rear, period. That
includes the numbnuts who think tailgating someone in the right-hand
lane gets them to their *off*-ramp any sooner, either. Way better to
be safe than insignificantly more prompt. We always have our option
to blame "awful traffic" regardless, and make a mental note to start
out earlier next time.
.
What really entertainingly screws things up is when two drivers
are incapable of merging; they take their little lack-of-arbitration-
skills battle out all the way past the end of the white triangle, and
when *they're* down to 30 MPH before figuring it out that's when you
get a nice compression wave going backwards from there. [Which part
of "yield" did the inbound one not understand??] I do my best to damp
those out when I see 'em forming, for the benefit of those behind.
.
If I take the second lane and do 65, I still get an unwelcome
share of rectal exam attempts. Now at least I can do something
about it. But I still prefer the right lane because it's more
amenable to slight slowdowns/speedups for upcoming terrain.
.
Those who don't understand the second-order flow subtleties in
what I just wrote need to turn off the phone, lose the testosterone
and fallacious unstated-minimum-speed thinking, and PAY ATTENTION
to what's happening at a wider radius around them. There is a lot
to be learned. Check out Smith System, one of the more prominent
commercial-driver training organizations that is now starting to
branch out to more general driver safety training too.
.
_H*

 

Driving is a game which you must try to never lose.

 

Another problem with the right lane, at least in Michigan, is that it is often badly beat up by overweight truck traffic. The difference in ride quality and noise between the right lane and the rest is often very noticeable.

It wasn't so bad back when we used to maintain our roads, but the economic disaster of the last decade has taken its toll.

Tom

 

What's weird about that is that you'd expect in a state where traffic is encouraged to spread out across all lanes rather than keep right except passing, the wear and tear would be spread more evenly. Unless the law about not having to keep right is a recent response to the badly deteriorated right-hand lane (easier to legislate this change than approve $billions of repairs)...

 

We'll find from many examples in our legislature that common sense does not apply.

 

Trucks have to stay right, except to pass. We have a lot of soft, marshy land in Michigan, which isn't great for supporting roads. The weight laws are fairly strict, but apparently you can pay extra and carry more weight. The right lanes get really bumpy.

Tom

 

This is what you do to tailgaters:
What should be done to tailgaters • VideoSift: Online Video *Quality Control

NSFW (language)

 

I'd hate to have that law in California. Big trucks usually travel on the 2nd to the far right lane on our freeways. In fact, the far right lane is often the fastest lane on the 405 and 110 parking lots.

 

" Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?"

Like most of you, I always have this issue even when I was driving my BMW 330 convertible. Even in that car, I kept to the speed limit and never on the fast lane, always on the #2 or #3 lane and people STILL tailgated me.

After months of thought, today I finally ordered a customized licensed frame that says on the top "DO NOT TAILGATE!" and on the bottom "DRIVING AT THE SPEED LIMIT!".

Clear enough. Anyone close enough can read and know my feelings from now on and it's not an overly rude comment that will likely fire back at me. Whatever happened to common courtesy in public places anyway...

I adamantly drive at the speed limits for many reasons...

1) Safety: Reaction time + actual braking distance = total braking distance. Hard to react when one is tailgating.
2) MPG: Don't want to be "fuelish"
3) Noise: Speed limits are also there to control tire noise levels. Have you ever stopped and gotten out of your car on the highway? Very noisy.
4) Legal: The limit is the limit. If I want to go faster or do something similarly stupid and stand out, I take my Suzuki bike to the track and lash out there.
5) Avoiding repairing the car: Cars are never the same once they are in a collision. I'd like to keep my car accident-free and don't want an insurance company to put a non-OEM bumper as a replacement or hassle them to give me an OEM bumper.

 

This is only true when you drive at the flow of traffic, not necessarily at the speed limit. If you're going 55 mph and everyone else is doing 75 mph, you're more likely to get into a collision.

 

I'd just be afraid that a licence plate frame or bumper sticker with that message on it would just entice those that would tail-gate to tail gate.

You're just reminding them of the whole idea. Your already driving a Prius, which is going to signal automatically to the grunt and slobber crowd that often purposely tail gate, that they should tail gate.

Just comes down to you are existing in a world full of different drivers and people. People with varying driving skills, attention spans and sometimes even political motivation.

But I don't know if stating you are driving the speed limit and asking those that are being unreasonable to NOT TAIL GATE..is simply like waving a red cape at a Bull.