Idiot!

Maybe it is where you live. Last night I'm taking the neighbor kids home after a play date. I typically drive 10-15 miles/hour on the gravel roads around here (the car is new and I want it to look good for a long time).

So a Subaru outback comes up behind me on a narrow gravel road (county). I pull way over, slow down, and then STOP. I sit there maybe 45 seconds and they do not pass (it was good visibility and clear).

Finally I just continued at 10-15 miles/hour with the Outback right behind me. Half a mile or so later they took a turn.

No fingers. No revving.

On the 2-lane state highways and the 4-lane freeways, I religiously (priously?) drive the speed limit (in sharp contrast to my younger days ). After a few miles, I typically have 2-4 cars behind me. I have been passed, but never any light flashing, fingers, etc.

 

the law will always be on the side of the person who is not speeding.

some speeding suv(or car or whatever) hits a prius going only 5 over to achieve good gas mileage. who gets the ticket? who is liable if someone is killed in the accident? the guy who's speeding. unless, of course, there are other factors such as the prius driver runs a red light or alcohol is involved or some other serious infraction. sure, we don't want people to think hybrids can't go fast. but we're well within our rights to obey the law.

police can pull you over for following too closely, and here it is a nasty ticket. so that is also against the law. road rage will get your license taken away for years. who's in the wrong there?

the only time i resort to flipping anyone off is if they cut me off and it's obvious that it was intentional or due to inattentive driving, or if someone does something that would cause an accident if the people nearby hadn't had quick response times. of course i don't like the people who try to display that their vehicle is better than my hybrid car by trying to blow by me for whatever reason, but i refrain from doing anything about that other than grumbling about them to myself or my passenger.

 

I don't understand what the mystique here in America is with fast driving, and weaving.

Did I just read that right? Some poster last page just said that the person weaving in and out of traffic is more responsible and safer than the person doing the limit?

That's a vast generalization, but that's also a really misinformed statement. If the person doing the limit is going to get into an accident, it's because someone HITS HIM, not the other way around.

We can't all cater to how aggressive the other people are on the road. The person who hits someone doing the limit because they are driving recklessly is at fault, and the person driving the limit, assuming he was driving responsibly in all other aspects, is free of fault, and gets the other guy's insurance to pay him back.

You people need to work on your road rage. There's all this hating on cars that are slower than you... You want to flip them off. WHY? Because their slowness is costing you maybe a couple of seconds or maybe minutes to your drive? It's not healthy to think that way.

 

well daron you make yourself sound like an idiot hoping that the beemer will flip over...... don't give prius drivers a bad reputation!

 

I have a suggestion for such cases that has worked wonders for me. No more angry fingers... I don't pull over, but I don't block them. As they go by (usually full of anger) I give them a wave and a friendly smile, as if I know them and didn't notice their antics.

This drives them nuts. First they are baffled--you are not responding as they expected or hoped.

Next they are afraid... it occurs to them that they might have made as nice person of themselves to somebody important... a boss, a coworker, someone from church... and their courage fades in embarassment.

Then step three hits, as it dawns on them that they have been had. But it's too late to do anything, since you have manuevered out of harm's way, with a car or a turn separating you from the nutcase.

You smile, knowing you got his goat, are safe, and that maybe you gave him something to think about that might change his behavior, especially if he didn't get a good enough look at you to go to Step Three, in which case he's still wondering if he screwed hiimself with his anger.

 

People who do that really iritate me as well, but I like your idea! Kill them with kindness in a way.

It probably is a lot safer as well, to in this day and age when you don't know how someone is going to respond.

 

It's great fun to watch their face: first "Wth?", then "Oh $HIT!", then "waitasec..."

 

You're an idiot if you think that driving 10 mph OVER the speed limit is "taking it upon yourself to regulate the traffic behind you"! <_< NO ONE, other than an emergency vehicle, has any right to expect you to pull over out of their way or exceed 10 mph over the limit, just for their convenience. I admit, I don't obey speed limits very well myself, but expecting others to excessively speed for my sake is ignorant. Now, if the guy was in the passing lane, and not passing,....that would be a different story.
You must be from Texas, because the highways in most states I've been in don't have a proper shoulder to pull onto to allow people to pass by.

 

Uh, that is irrelevant. If the Prius is going 5 below and the SUV is going exactly the speed limit and he hits the Prius, he is still at fault even though neither one was speeding. Obviously speeding is not the same thing as crashing, now is it? It's like saying driving while female is wrong if a woman crashes into a man.

Crashing into cars is wrong; you should always drive in such a way that prevents such an occurence. But you should also drive in such a way that helps prevent other people from crashing into you, and alot of people here don't realize this. It's all well and good to say there's nothing wrong with driving slowly, but if you're killed, what good is it? Obviously the driver that killed you is at fault and he'll be imprisoned for manslaughter. Is that worth dying for?

 

There is such thing as driving so slowly that it's not legal to do so on a highway. Usually that's about 40 MPH, and a cop will pull you over.

We're not talking about that. We're talking about what would be considered a "safe" speed on the highway, or on urban roads.

On the highway, slower traffic stays to the right, and the left lane is used just for passing. If you're doing below the limit, stay out of the passing lane. You should probably be in the right lane if you're going really slow.

On roads around 40 or 35 MPH, I do not like to speed. The reason? Especially if i'm not familiar with the roads, it can be very dangerous to speed excessively if the road changes and becomes windy for example. So I won't speed just because I see someone tailgating me.

I consider myself a defensive driver, but defensive driving doesn't mean you have to be a pushover to all of the aggressive drivers out there.

I have to remind people that the issue shouldn't be people driving at a normal speed on a road, the "slow" drivers. The problem is aggressive drivers. The problem is Road Rage, not slow drivers.

Those of you out there that are talking about flipping off slow drivers and how they are asking to be killed... how aggressive of a driver are you?

 

There are situations in which slow cars exacerbate the bad habits of more aggressive drivers. As in "lolly-gaging".

If any cars pass me on my right and if the right lane is empty in front of me, I'll get over into it. Even if I'm doing above the speed limit, if that lane is open, I'm in it.

Drivers in this neck of the woods like to get into the middle lane of the highway and then drive at or just below the speed limit. They do this even if the lane to the right of them is empty. My husband calls them "lolly-gagers".

It's dangerous (and illegal) to pass slower traffic on the right. I've seen it happen too often; someone decides to pass on the right and, just as they come up behind the slower car, the slower car tries to get into the right lane. Yikes!

Dan's asked some co-workers, admitted lollys, why they do this. They think the middle lane is the safest. They're not in the merging lane and they're not blocking the fast lane. If people want to go faster than they are traveling, then those folks can pass them. Pass on the right or the left, they don't care. They don't see that they can cause accidents because impatient folks will be tempted to pass on their right, weaving between traffic to do so.

Is there such a thing as passive-agressive driving? Lolly-gaging would be a perfect example of it!

 

Hasn't Maryland repealed that old law yet? PA got rid of it ~20 years ago, and I couldn't get anywhere here in FL if it was illegal to pass on the right. Lately, it seems that everybody thinks they have a right to drive the speed limit in the left lane. FL almost passed a law to make it illegal for slower vehicles to be in the left lane, but Jeb Bush vetoed it, because he thought it was encouraging aggressive drivers.

 

I agree with you, except I add a little twist to it. Long ago, my cousin (an interpreter for the deaf) taught me the way to say donkey in sign language. It's a lot like a salute, except instead of snapping yor hand downward, you invert the salute and bring it up and out a little.

Whenever someone pisses me off in traffic, I flash them a big old smile, and give them the donkey salute. I get the satisfaction of giving the finger, without them knowing what I've done. Not only does it confuse them, and diffuse the situation, but I get to feel like I outsmarted them.

We're all guilty of driving poorly sometimes. When some pain-in-the-tailgate SUV driver acts like a jerk, I just try to remember that, take a deep breath, and remind myself . . . I get four times the gas mileage they do!

 

Thats a pretty retarded post...I drive the tollways everyday in and around Chicago. I find that I can drive 62-63 mph in the right lane and keep up with most traffic and get great mileage (usually 53-54 mpg). Meanwhile the center and left lanes can be free for the people (you, maybe?) who like to drive 25-30 mph OVER the speed limit.
As other posters have mentioned here, the speed limit is a limit, not a suggestion. There are minimums, which I agree are unsafe for the tollways...but because someone wants to drive the limit in the right lane does not make them a danger, it just makes them smarter than it seems that you are.

 

I find this funny.

First of all, I wondered how it's possible that people get these high milage without ticking others off. I've done everything but the best milage I can get without being inconsiderate to others is 47mpg on a reasonable highway with moderate hills going at speed limit of 65. When I hear people say "I can get 50mpg easiliy on the highway" I honestly thing "B.S. They must be pissing a lot of people off." or they are going "down hill all the way home". I've squeezed 29mpg out of my v8 audi when EPA estimated it at 24mpg so I know how to get the most milage but without pissing every driver on the road, that number is difficult.

Perhaps you are being inconsiderate?
I don't know what happened. But here's a different angle...
Maybe you flip the bird on a driver who as taking his pregnant wife in the SUV on the way to the hospital, or a pet dog choking on a toy and the guy's rushing to the vet to save his buddy's life. Maybe their primary vehicle is a Honda Insight and they have been eco conscious since 1999? They are thinking, please move, I really need to go. There this egotistical cheap lazy inconsiderate bastard driving around a Prius who don't care about people behind him and flips an bird without thinking twice, as s/he is smirking.

Then again, the driver might've been an jack @ss.

It's hard to say...

 

"First of all, there's no excuse for driving recklessly."

I agree, the poster should definately be checking his rear view more frequently, not using your mirrors is reckless.

 

[/QUOTE] Driving the speed limit or say 10 mph over and to take it upon yourself to regulate the traffic behind you, doesn't make sense to me.

 

Just a note, it is possible to get 50mpg or better highway without being a road hazard or being inconsiderate. Some areas are just more amenable to the Prius then other areas. Traffic flow and such also can dictate the feasibility of some techniques.