What to do about tail gaters?

I usually just let off my gas pedal and let my car coast to 10 miles below the speed limit. No matter the honking. No matter the traffic. Then I will gently pull over to the side.
It seems this is the best thing to "get their goat"

Like my grandmother... she was a master at frustration creation!

 

There are any number of reasons a vehicle could be traveling
more slowly than "the flow", speed limits aside. It could be
having engine trouble. The driver might be from out of town
and trying to *find* something, like a cross street. It might
be a loaded truck on an uphill. It might be someone who's seeing
a hazard that cars behind can't yet. It is up to traffic behind
to ADAPT to this in a safe manner and wait for an opportunity
to pass if appropriate, but to do so at a SAFE DISTANCE until
such time as overtaking can happen. Any other spurious arguments
in favor of letting people behind you do your driving for you
are 100% BS.
.
Unfortunately there never *are* cops around when you need them
to remove these numbnuts from the road, even though it could be
a huge revenue source for them until the public wised up that
tailgating enforcement was actually beginning to happen.
.
That's why I came up with my own interim solution.
.
_H*

 

This must depend upon where you live. It contradicts the state drivers manuals of both states where I have been licensed. (Yes, I still have a copy of each.)

I learned to drive in a town where a driver habitually going 5 mph over the limit could expect to accumulate enough points for a license revocation in about a year. Decades later, a leadfoot inlaw has been nailed there multiple times.

For the past couple decades, I've lived about a mile from a notorious speed trap just across a city boundary. Last year they added a photo speed camera, but cops still sit around the corner.

Ticket prices around here have long been adjusted according to local government budget shortfalls. My budget doesn't have room to contribute, so I drive accordingly.

I know there are numerous similar jurisdictions all across the country. And when traveling, since I don't know which areas conform to which patterns, I obey the limits everywhere.

 

I must admit that I find this situation amazing...I find traffic much more aggressive driving all over Europe, but perhaps I don't drive enough in the US...

Anyway, if the OP was already exceeding the speed limit going up hill how can comments like 'we are like the slow old lady' come about? Even if I was driving my Porsche I would still be within 10% of the maximum speed limit...Which going 35mph is actually exceeding....

I am absolutely gob smacked.....as the OP doesn't seem to be going too slow and going with the flow at 50mph in a 30mph zone is just plain wrong and very dangerous....That is nearly twice the speed limit, in Europe that is loosing your license territory...and your car...

 

And one has to think that the road engineers set that 35 MPH limit for a reason, right? It may seem "stupid" to those that want to go faster, but it sure sounds like your average surface street with lots of possible cross traffic. I know, personally, I will NOT exceed the speed limit just because someone behind me feels they need to go faster. I don't recall seeing any provision stating you need to in any drivers handbook. You should pull over if you're impeding flow, yes, but traveling at (or even within) the limit is not impeding the flow of traffic.

 

I totally agree with you. I'm just coming off a beautiful Acura TL Type S. I was the fastest thing on the road which gave me the opportunity to come up on every slow driver that decided to inhabit my path to work. This included, the trucks in first gear, the beaters spewing oil, the phone gabbing geriatric not realizing she's doing 30 on an interstate, the stubborn/oblivious old guy who's not stepping on it for anything, and the hypermilling crowd.

I now have more sympathy going from driving like a teen age boy on his way to a sorority party to an old guy in a matter of one car purchase and the first tank of gas.

It really is a world of extremes on our highways. Not pissing people off intentionally or unintentionally is a good practice. But then again, 57 MPG on a commute that previously only yielded 21 MPG is very attractive...

 

Standard traffic engineering practice is to set the speed limit at what 80% of the prevailing cars travel unless of course there is an overriding safety reason not to.

So many of our speed limits were set well before even the junkiest cars handles and brakes like a sportscar from the 70s. The speed limits are abnormally slow as any driver who knows that typical interstate speeds are now 75 to 90 MPH and city is at 40+ MPH irrespective of the posted speed.

Also, I have never heard the argument made that speeding actually saves gas and precious resources. A highway is designed to carry a certain amount of cars at a specific speed (flow rate) without getting into turbulent flow which causes the highway to stop and degrade to bumper to bumper driving which is consummately wasteful.

As the car population grows, the only way to increase the car carrying capacity of the road is putting in more lanes (a wider pipe) or increasing the flow rate. Wider pipes is tremendously expensive and wasteful of natural resources.

If everybody decided to go 50 rather than 80 on the highways, a huge percentage of our nation's roads would become unusable.

So, as hypermillers we are actually consuming a resource (a valuable "slot" on the highway) and getting away with it because there are so few of us. If everybody did this, there'd be chaos on any major commute route. You'd never get home at night.

 

Whilst i agree with nearly all the points i can't see the relevance to breaking the law?

 

Each of you is impressed with the latest Technological gadgetry in these amazing cars, yet everyone is advocating the "Cave Man" approach to these other people, who drive dangerously and are in fact classified as, " AGRESSIVE DRIVERS ". CALL A COP on that nice Built-in, easy to use, ready to call Cell Phone, and report the Perp, as the Dangerous AGRESSIVE DRIVER he is, Driving Dangerously close, and attempting to intimidate you.

In the US most highways post the cell phone number of police on the signage, USE IT !

 

Those speeds depend upon locality. While speeds in my region have certainly crept up over the past generation, they haven't reached the levels you claim.

As for why speeds creep up, I don't believe it is because the cars handle better now. It is because highway construction and automotive crash protection have greatly improved, substantially reducing mortality under given driving patterns. Since humans have a tendency to accept a fixed amount of perceived risk, they have sped up and become more aggressive, bringing mortality rates closer to their normal threshold of acceptance.

Flow rate is determined by car spacings (two second rule, or whatever reduced spacing guideline people actually obey), not by physical speed. A 60% increase in speed does not translate into a similar increase in flow rate (expressed in vehicles per lane per hour), unless one is trying to change 2-car pileups into 50-car pileups.

 

First, many of the highways which have seen speed creep have been around for 30 years. Not much has changed on them in 30 years. I've lived in many of the 6 largest metro areas in the past 15 years. It is very common to have cars at 90 mph. In fact, wherever I've travel, SF, LA, I5/central valley, Boston, Miami, Texas, Las Vegas, cars are WELL above 75 MPH consistently.

The flow rate is not determined by spacing. The flow rate is the number of cars per hour. Spacing does not increase proportional to speed. At some point no matter what speed people are travelling they will only allow a gap of a few cars so that they are not constantly being cut in front of. While flow rate may not be directly proportional to speed, it is certainly increased by speed. Also, at some point of speed reduction, a critical point is hit where the traffic just stops and degrades into a bumper to bumper condition.

Increasing speed increases the car carrying capacity of a highway; just like any databus, fluid pipeline or whatever.

If more and more people hypermilled, then this would substantially lower the carrying capacity of congested highways. People going fast are doing a service to the environment.

 

This may have sounded good to you in your head, but it looks pretty foolish in print. Are you sure that's what you meant? Should we all be driving Hummers, too, and using up the oil as fast as possible so then we can develop alternatives?

 

You need to think about it for a second. If everybody drove the interstate at 30 MPH, can you imagine the congestion and the overall waste of fuel? What would the commute look like in a major metro rush hour? You'd have tens of thousands of cars stopping and going on the highway wasting huge amounts of momentum just converting it to heat. You'd have fender benders galore which would shut down the highway for hours on end.

Up to a point, the faster you go the quicker you are on and off the highway leaving room for other people. This reduces congestion and increases the overall fuel economy of everybody during a commute.

Why do you think city EPA mileage is generally less than Highway EPA mileage? Overall speeds are lower in the city, after all.

 

***nws**** foul language

 

To further the matter, people driving fast are doing a service to society at their own cost, i.e. individually using a bit more fuel to reduce overall congestion. You have a very civic minded and egalitarian gesture here. Much the same way that you have an awesome combination of personal interest and societal benefit when we embrace cars rather than public transportation. We noble citizens are paying for the entire rolling stock necessary to carry hundreds of millions of people per day. We charge nothing back to government for doing so. They provide the tarmac. We provide the fuel and the rolling stock to establish universal coverage of any point in the USA to any other point in the USA -- unlike public transportation.

I'm sick and tired of all the complaints of selfish Americans.

Envirowhackos just want to control human behavior rather than embrace humanity and encourage its prosperity.

 

Wow. This thread just moved from the merely surreal to the other side of the Twilight Zone. What a load of self-serving rationalization.

Tom

 

It simply isn't logical that the front car would be at fault if it was traveling at the speed limit and it was rear-ended by a car behind it that was speeding - especially if driving in the right-hand lane on a road with a passing lane. Even if the car in front had to slow down suddenly or come to a stop (to avoid hitting a deer or a pedestrian or whatever). One point that I don't think has been made is that as drivers we can only control the distance between our car and the car in front of us; we can't control the distance between our car and the car behind us. We also can't control how quickly the car behind us responds to a sudden change in traffic; all we can control is our own response.

I don't really care whether local culture in some places is to "go with the flow", no matter how fast that requires everyone to drive (and taken to its extreme this approach would require everyone to drive as fast as the fastest driver on the road); I want to see proof that in these places traffic law supports this practice. For those who advocate the "go with the flow" approach (meaning speed because everyone else is speeding)... please provide some legal justification for this position.

 

ound:

This is great stuff, man. Are you here all week?

 

If you don't have autodimming mirror, there is a switch to flip under the mirror. That'll reduce the brightness.