Don't want to make people behind me mad anymore

I know what you mean by San Diego. I work for the County here and a Sheriff advised the best strategy is simply to not acknowledge them.
You don't want to be aggressive OR passive. I am rather assertive with by "broken record" scrolling LED license plate frame I got at Pep Boys for my message: SLOW DOWN... Save Gas... SAFETY FIRST... Don't Tailgate...
One way of dealing with tailgaters is to squirt your washer, which flys over and hits the car behind if they are too close.
But San Diego for some reason has its share of childish drivers.

 

This is false in a couple of ways:

1. The road is a public road, not your own private lane. People have a reasonable expectation that you're not going to poke along, slowing possibly hundreds of cars and perhaps leaving a wake of accidents behind you that you never even see.

2. Almost all dangerous situations in traffic involve a difference in speed, so if you're poking along, you are dangerous.

3. You don't have to be "someone who has stretched their days so thin..." in order to be annoyed by someone who is going interminably slow in order to satisfy themselves, no matter how inconvenient it is to the vast majority of people on the road.

 

You were probably wrong. That's okay, so was I when I first started.

Consideration for others is also a virtue, and is less dangerous to boot.

As far as I can tell, accelerating briskly (poking into the PWR zone for a bit, but easing off the gas as you pick up speed) will result in better mileage than babying it. Concentrate on anticipating traffic, geography, and your car (battery charge, warm-up state) and you'll do MUCH better than keeping your eyes glued to the ECO light.

The Prius knows absolutely NOTHING about conditions even a few seconds ahead of you, much less a half mile down the road. It will never make decisions as well as a human who looks ahead and considers the Big Picture.

 

Doesn't matter if I'm driving my Prius or my Honda S2000, the slow people in front of me make me mad!

As for Prius MPG mileage, I am no longer afraid of accelerating with the HSI bar going all the way up to the PWR zone to reach my desired speed. The ICE is there to pull along the Prius, so I use it fully... and when I pulse and glide, I almost always use the ICE in the PWR zone... and guess what.

My MPGs have actually increased to 47.8mpg's which is good for my commute with large hills and freeway driving.

I did ECO mode and slow motor only acceleration on my very first tank, but I have grown to learn, as you have... that is not feasible in San Diego.

Accelerate aggressively and you'll be surprised at how your MPGs don't suffer, and may actually improve.