No Respect On The Freeway

try accelerating quickly just under the red on the power bar and as soon as you reach the speed you want let off and drop the power back to almost the bottom of the scale this will give great mpg and may keep that BMW/AUDI off your tail.

Do you know what the difference between a BMW and a procupine is? The porcupine has the pricks on the outside.

 

Sometimes it seems like people are tailgating me more now, but I think that in my case it's just that with the rear window like it is which is new to me, the proximity of other drivers is a lot more noticeable. I doubt I am being tailgated more. I think it's just that I can see them better when they are right.there. I guess I'll know for sure if there's a difference when I take off on a long road trip, but so far, I don't think so.

I haven't noticed more rudeness directed my way yet, but I'm only a little more than a month in and so far driving the same rural area most of the time. I see on the innerwebz an awful lot of videos and pictures of Prii being literally smoked by big diesel trucks, like they'll pull up by a Prius and deliberately belch smoke all over it. Is that a thing? It seems weird, but then I'm often left scratching my head over the weird things people will do just to one-up someone else.

"Oh, there's one of those funny looking little cars with a driver I've probably never met but who likely meets a lot of stereotypes I don't like based on I'm not sure what exactly, so I'm going to figuratively wag my willy at him or her from my jacked up pickup truck which has no such possible negative stereotypes." People are funny.

 

Haha I've actually had this happen to me once. I'm not sure if it was purposely directed at me or if that's the only way this truck knew how to accelerate but she had 2 giant smokestacks coming out of her bed. Very similar to this but without the obvious trolling:



I will say that thing does spew a lot of black smoke and I had a feeling the driver had a distinct pleasure in the way she drove.

 

Just put a bumper sticker on your Prius that says "Obama's change is pretty slow too!"

 

i just find it humorous you guys think this is solely because you are in a prius. what everyone here is describing will happen to anyone in any car. some people just want to be aggressive, most don't. Why it would bother anyone they're being tailgated in the second lane while going over the speed limit is beyond me. I think it's absolutely hilarious and I've seem people do this in every car I've ever owned, from my vett, to my ford pickup, to my honda crv, to my prius. who cares.

i don't play games with people. if they try to play games with me i stay pretty much oblivious to it because i just don't care. i'll drive my way you drive yours.

 

It's definitely a thing.

Sometimes they do it to bicyclists too.

Very classy.

 

I don't have enough Prius experience to be any authority on The Prius Experience™, but having ridden motorcycles and driven tractor trailers, I can emphatically say that there are people who are pretty antagonistic toward those. Based on the fact that jerks just plain exist in all varieties and flavors from those who act based on stereotypes to those with a weird chip on their shoulders, it's not hard for me to imagine that people exist who would be a jerk to someone in a Prius because they drive a Prius just like some people are jerks to truckers and some are jerks to bikers and some are jerks to _whoever_. It's also not hard for me to imagine that people perceive persecution when it doesn't exist and that some people let others push their buttons too easily and engage in power struggles. I think there is room in reality for all those factors which, yeah, includes the Prius Haters Club™. Being mobile and confined behind glass makes a lot of people comfortable with aggression. Ha, I'm reminded of a Christmas rant I made last year about being out and about shopping how people in the stores were so pleasant and polite and Merry Christmassy and cheerful, and then seeing some of those same people in parking lots and on streets, they suddenly became assassins nearly causing pedestrians to go all Dukes Of Hazzard tuck and roll across their hoods to avoid being run down. People use their vehicles to take out all sorts of frustrations, and there are probably plenty of people frustrated with Prius owners because of stereotypes or maybe one bad experience.

tl;dr: Haters gonna hate.

 

Ah, yes, cyclists! My husband used to be an avid bicyclist, but we are in an area that is not bike friendly at all, meaning not only narrow shoulders and no bike lanes, but they are generally seen as a nuisance. There are people who will actually deliberately try to graze or blow them. After several close calls by visibly irate drivers and some local fatalities, he finally had to give up road riding and stick to trails which are virtually non existent around here.

Which reminds me that I probably need to be checking out the threads for bike racks for the Prius. But, bah, the thought of having to load up bikes to ride them somewhere else because some people are jerks is disheartening.

 

I Apologize to the OP.. I'm the guy doing the tailgating.. There's a 180 mile stretch of I95 that I commonly drive where my car doesn't go below 85. I usually lead the speed train from the NC/VA border to SC...DAMN I love that car.

 

I just don't feel that driving close to the speed limit is asking for it. And to clarify, when I say two lane road, I mean one lane one way and one lane the other way, so there is no slow lane and passing lane, just one lane each way. Anyway, you're right, I do get the same results in any car, but that is because I am driving close to the clearly posted speed limit. And when I am on a multilane highway/freeway, I am mostly OK in the slow lane, until the weavers tailgate you when they don't feel others are driving fast enough in the passing lane. I don't mind so much if they pass and are gone. It's the tailgating that bothers me the most.

 

Hhaha if you live in California. You could write down the license plate and call the local air district. They will send them a ticket/fine. cars here are required to do smogchecks and air districts here are so strict.

Don't know if it's the same for other states.

SPH-D710 ?

 

There is no such thing here in SC. So we have all the rednecks with their jacked up trucks spewing smoke all over the place. Not to mention all the nasty smelling cars that people don't get fixed because they don't have to. We used to be required to get our vehicles checked out yearly for operational headlights, tail lights, brake lights, signals, wipers and emissions but they did away with that a long time ago. Too bad as that's created a problem with stinky cars and no working lights of any kind.

I just went on a weekend road trip to the beach (4.5 hours one way) and I didn't feel like I was treated any differently because I was in a Prius. I was keeping up with traffic and passing when necessary. I also had my son (14 months) in the car so I was on high alert. On the way home my sister and I were traveling together, her in a 2010 Prius Four and me in my 2014 Prius Three. We didn't get tailgated simply because of our car. Though she did have a problem with a girl in an Explorer who was riding the left lane and not passing but preventing her from passing on the right. There was one instance when a douche in a Corvette raced up on my bumper when I was in the left lane to pass a car. As soon as I felt safe to move over and started to do so, he couldn't wait for me to be out of his lane and was already accelerating past me while I was still in the process of merging to the right. He proceeded to drive like this even after passing me so I think it was just his douchy nature. He had a custom tag that said "SEEYAH" if that gives any insight to his driving habits. Interestingly enough, I stopped to fill up and there he was. I only realized it after he left the guy pumping gas next to me to get back in his car in the parking lot or I would have told him he should be careful because people could have kids in the cars he recklessly passes.

In my 2012 Mustang (I do miss her) I used to get people tailgating too. It's not just a Prius thing, but how bad people are with driving now. Cars are faster, time is shorter, people are running late more often so they drive more aggressively.

 

Can't and won't speak to how it's like in other parts of the country, let alone other people's experiences (we also all have our own personal driving personalities that are different, even with the entire pulse/glide), but I totally see it here. The difference is like night and day on the same streets in the same cities and metro areas I've driven for years.

 

I've had the Volt for a bit over two months now- I drive it on the same roads, the same way and at the same speeds I drove the two Prius's I had for the prior two years.
What I've noticed is I still get tailgated occasionally in the Volt- but... they now pretty much move to the left more quickly and go on their way like they do with any other regular car. With the Prius, they used to just stick on my butt like they were attached w/a trailer hitch- for much longer periods. I'm guessing most don't know the Volt's an EV and they see the Chevy emblem and think it's just another regular car not some tree-hugger-mobile and just don't give it a second thought and move on.

I think the Prius's now iconic shape just sets off a certain demographic and it's like they're out for revenge (for their bad decision to buy a 12mpg vehicle) and/or want to show their dominance by forcing the Prius to change lanes, go faster, or get off "their" roadway.

 

I concur. The Volt doesn't stand out as being as visibly distinct from other passenger cars like the Prius. Or perhaps that demographic is more tolerant of eco-friendly cars if they're "American".

 

I had to Google to know what a Volt looks like, and if not for the talk here, I would not recognize it as a tree-hugger car, anyway.

 

I've definitely noticed this in the last month or so of driving my Prius. My other car is a 4Runner, modified for off-road driving - read: it's rather big, gets poor mileage, and looks "hardcore." People definitely drive differently around the Prius than the 4Runner, especially in terms of tailgating. I drive fairly quickly, and loathe left-lane bandits, so I'm pretty positive it's not my driving habits.

Some people are just idiots, and hate Prii, even up here in the land of the hybrid.

 

Well you shouldn't be driving 70 in the fast lane if you are not passing. In many eastern states I've seen cops ticket cars for using the left lane (but not passing the car to the right). It's considered blocking the roadway for emergency vehicles.