How are you treated by other drivers?

Hey if I was behind you and you were doing 5mph under the speed limit I'd pull out around you too! Frankly I haven't had anyone really treat me any different than when I was driving my old PT Cruiser which may be a tad smaller than the Prius. Funny thing is that when in the wifes Buick Rendevous people rarely pull out or tailgate. I think its the small car syndrome thinking; in other words if you are smaller than they are they feel its OK to pull out in front of you as your smaller and you will have to get out of the way. Its the SUV mentality. :angry:

 

I've had no more problems than in my old car (Camry). But then again I definitely do not drive like an old lady.

 

I haven't had any real problems, but the Prius is pretty small on the outside, so its intimidation factor is low.

Tom

 

I haven't noticed too many people showing any sort of love or hate towards the Prius.

Last night, though, I was driving on a "highway" that is really only one lane either direction, no center lane or divider. It is widely known to be a death road, LOTS of fatalities along that road. I live within 2 miles of it, so I'm well aware that it is dangerous. The speed limit is 50, for good reason.

It was around 6 pm, twilight, and I was going 55. The guy behind me didn't like this, and decided to tailgate me. I don't know what he really thought I could do about it - no lane to switch to, no shoulder to pull onto, oncoming traffic only feet away. Well, as soon as there was a break in oncoming traffic, he zipped around me. My husband saw him give me the finger, so he must not have liked my speed.

I don't feel too bad about it - I am familiar enough with that road to prefer perhaps getting the finger once in a while than to having a fatal or near-fatal accident. It's a very deceptive road - the signs say it is a highway, but it's not the regular sort of highway. Lots of blind spots, oncoming traffic can easily drift over the line, a bunch of semis that can easily cause you to drift a bit when they pass you - so if some yahoo can't figure out the danger, I guess there's not a whole lot you can do about it. It just makes me sad to think of the poor guy whose going to be on the receiving end of that collision.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(BuddyL @ Nov 4 2007, 07:45 AM) [snapback]534379[/snapback]</div>

I am inclined to agree. On my last trip to the US, I had a variety of rentals, including a Prius, most of them smaller than the average because that is what I am comfortable with, and while I had no specific example of anyone getting upset with me, I certainly felt that a number of the bigger cars always felt that they had right of way regardless of what you or they were doing. In all cases, when driving around the US, I find travelling approx 5mph over the posted limit generally kept me out of trouble.

There have been a number of other threads with the same general issue - the bigger the car, the more the driver feels they own the road.

In Australia, don't seem to have that problem, possibly because most of us drive smaller cars, although the number of SUVs are on the increase :angry: , so who knows, we may start getting the same behaviour. Hope not. B)

 

Frankly, I think things are just getting worse overall. A lot of
people are probably in denial about fuel, about their own attitudes,
getting all kinds of conflicting signals from the automotive world,
etc. When people shop for cars based on how many airbags they have,
you know something is deeply, deeply wrong.
.
I had a funny one the other day -- 5 miles of stop-n-crawl along
128, a major local artery, and a whole lot of the traffic was headed
to get off at 24 south. Typical huge rush-hour mess. So I've got
a nice big buffer open in front of me and we're all creeping along
at an average of 20 mph or so -- and in my usual way I'm doing about
20 fairly steadily and letting the buffer close and open as the
traffic ahead does its usual stop-n-start "traffic waves" thing.
Just as I see the end of the wait-to-exit-to-24 packup and reach
it, some yutz in a beemer comes tearing by me on the right and I
hear him yell "hey a-hole, keep up!" and then he's out of there into
the freshly opened road. Keep up with *what*, I wanted to ask him,
a two-mile packup of cars doing 20 mph? What possible benefit does
piling into the back of that serve anyone? What he failed to notice
was that my lane was moving just as well if not a little faster than
the two to the left of me that whole time, and it had *just* broken
up. But it's that idiotic short-term thinking that's made things
such a nightmare out there. When people can't think more than half
a car ahead, can't merge, can't anticipate ... it's hardly any fault
of the Prius or its driver.
.
There are really times I want the dashcam constantly running and then
be able to publish pictures of his rapidly receding nice person on some
popular wall of shame. "Stay away from this dork, he's dangerous."
.
_H*

 

Here in West Los Angeles, the Prius is everywhere. You can't drive for a few minutes without seeing several. They are treated like any other car.... especially since Al Gore's son got that 100mph traffic ticket in Orange County.

The "ain't no Prius going to pass me!" sort of thing only happened to me on Hwy 15 to Las Vegas. A large powerfull SUV or monster Pickup is chugging up one of those long uphills and you come by with a Prius at 80mph and they floor it to make their point. For that matter, I've had a Buick sedan do the same thing...

(Disclaimer: ... Nda3rdcar does not endorse speeding. Always drive safely, try to obey posted speed limits, consider traffic, weather and vehicle conditions for the driving speed)

Anyhooo.... So there are a few folks out there that really don't like having a Prius get by them. It's an (insert your least favorite vehicle here) sort of mentality. Try to avoid them... let them crash into someone else. Just know that some drivers shouldn't be...driving. Not much for advise I guess, but after a while you may not notice the other drivers as much. Your Prius is just a car, it uses gas, it goes, it stops, it turns, it reverses and it simply does it all with less gas than other cars.

Enjoy your new car...