It’s easy, just remember three things:
Doesn’t sound like it was a truck but I’ve seen trucks ride up on slow folks (who aren’t passing anyone – just putting along) in the middle lane. Car drivers sometime forget they often aren’t allowed in the leftmost lane if there’s three.
Re killing them:
wrecksdart described how he was going to let a tailgater pass him (on a 2-lane road) , but, by speeding up, not allow him back into the right lane - when there was oncoming traffic, ie, about to have a head-on collision. He thought it was kinda funny - but he “didn’t give a fuck”.
Get it now?
And, btw - in that video - the tailgater almost wound up in traffic on the opposite side of the highway. That was close to being a head-on collision with at least two cars - because some asshole thought he was justified in “teaching a tailgater a lesson”.
A tailgater is guilty of being discourteous. The brake-checker is guilty of deliberate malfeasance with a good chance of bodily injury to loads of innocent people. The tailgator deserves a ticket. The brake-checker in that video belongs in court. In my humble opinion, of course.
Dude. That’s pretty fucked up. I’d stop doing it if I were you. Remember too assholes sometimes have young, innocent passengers.
Even re-reading the comment trying to find your implication, that’s not how I interpret it. There’s no reference to a two-lane road, or oncoming traffic.
He says that he will stay in a position such that they can’t pass, and “laugh when they have to hit the brakes to avoid the car ahead.” You have to do more than hit the brakes to avoid a head-on collision at speed. You can, however, hit the brakes to avoid rear-ending a slower car in the fast lane.
ETA: Not that I approve of his behavior. I believe that the proper thing to do when someone is trying to change your driving behavior by being an asshole is not to do so: continue driving exactly as you would have if there wasn’t someone trying to give you a windshield washer fluid enema.
If you change your behavior to accommodate an asshole, or if you change your behavior to spite an asshole, either way, the asshole has won, by making you do something you’d prefer not to do. If someone tailgates me or won’t stop flashing their brights at me, and I determine I’m doing nothing wrong, I just smile, and wave, and go back to driving the same way that I always drive.
No where did he say a two lane road (ie traffic flowing in both ways). People who tailgate on a two lane road are epic assholes because there are very few places designated as passing zones unless you are outside of any sort of city limits. I’m pretty sure he meant that on a 4 lane, divided interstate, ie 2 lanes going the same direction.
Unless he wants to chime in to clarify I’m not sure anyone “get’s it”.
I meant 4 lane, divided interstate highway. I’ve never prevented, or tried to prevent, someone from re-entering the flow of traffic when passing on a two-lane highway. As a meaningless aside, I have had people do that to me multiple times when riding the m/c and passing.*
Other than that, I’m every dingbat you see pulling into traffic and knowing full well I’m only going 15 mph to everyone else’s 45mph. I drink when I drive and when I don’t drink I smoke and when I don’t smoke I’m trying to roll or load one up and if I don’t have anything to smoke then I’m checking the cell, text and voice, to see if the liquor store is closer than the hookup or vice versa, and if it’s a Sunday or unfamiliar territory, that’s what the flask is for.
No tailgating, though.
*As a m/c rider, I can say without a doubt that people have acted maliciously towards me because I was on the m/c. Lane splitting, among other things, on the East Coast is an excellent and speedy way to bring out that behavior.
On rewatching a few times at full-screen, it’s not apparent that the motorcyclist applied their brakes at all.
Midwestern (WI/IL/IN/MI) state troopers do this all the time at night – you can be poking along at the speed limit (cruise control) at 3AM and this car zips up on you with their high beams on (so you can’t see that it’s a cop car), tailgates you for several minutes (or however long it takes for them to run your plates), and if you speed up to get out of their way, on go the mars lights.
If you don’t take the bait, the trooper will eventually get bored and pass you, off to hunt his next victim.
If someone accidentally crashes the natural inclination is to at least slow down to process whatever is going on.
Instead the brake-checker gunned it big time, that tells me they were focused on the tailgater the whole time and fled the scene once they saw that their brake-check resulted in a crash.
Not saying there’s criminal liability (I don’t know the law in this at all) but they were definitely fleeing something.
GA State police have done this to me, which I tolerated for a little while on a rural two-lane highway until I didn’t tolerate it and signaled, and pulled over to wait for them to pass. They slow-rolled me, then hauled ass into the distance as I regained the road, then pulled a quick (and illegal on the unbroken double-yellow divider line) u-turn and chirped me with their lights and sirens as they went by. Cops in America.
I agree with Mister44’s interpretation, he was clearly talking about oncoming traffic.
“Bait them into trying to pass at a stupid place”
What does that mean one a 1-way multi-lane road? People pass whenever they want (or whenever there’s a gap). The only way the lead car enables someone to pass is by pulling a bit to the side on a 2-way road.
"then give my vehicle enough gas to keep the front bumper even with the tailgater’s driver’s
window, "
The only reason pulling even with the other car matters is if the tailgater needs to get back into the right lane.
“It’s always more fun and certainly more dangerous”
Nothing dangerous with this manoeuvre on a 1-way road. Blocking someone into a lane with oncoming traffic? Very dangerous.
Please never do this again. The tailgater is being an asshole, you’re deliberately putting other people’s lives at risk.
They’re not even in the same ballpark of wrongness as you.
Welcome to the thread. Do try to keep up.
In Europe you can meet “drivers” that will first tailgate and flash high beams at you trying to force you to let them pass (never mind that you are passing trucks in the right lane and have no space to move over to!). Then they will overtake you and intentionally stomp the brakes - basically a lot more dangerous variant of flipping the bird.
There are some Darwin award candidates who brake checked busses and trucks like this too - I am not sure what is the mental process in the head of someone who tries to brake check a 20t bus full of people or a 40 ton loaded semi …
A typical example: http://vod.tn.cz.prg.cmestatic.com//2013/10/11/1569335-hq.mp4
There have been several serious accidents on the motorways because of this. The perpetrators know that it is almost impossible for the victim to prove that there was a car ahead that forced them to crash or the brake checker will claim that they saw an animal and had to brake suddenly, in which case the cops will be inclined to blame the guy who rear-ended the idiot for failing to maintain a safe distance. So this behaviour is quite widespread - especially in Central Europe (Czech Republic, Slovak Rep., Poland). Only recently, with the dashcams becoming pervasive and the police using the motorway cameras more agressively have been several of these fools sent behind bars.
So no, if you rear-end someone it doesn’t make you automatically liable, for both criminal and insurance purposes.
Here’s my point of view.
People going behind you MUST be able to brake to a complete halt without bumping into you if you have to stop because of an accident.
This means, for practical purposes, that they MUST be at least two seconds behind you. It’s easily checked, notice when the car ahead passes a post or other landmark and check there’s two seconds till you pass the same post.
If the guy behind is going not just 1½ second, put like 0,1 seconds behind you, then this guy is putting you at everybody else at serious risk. The only way I know of to put him off that behaviour is to put my foot on the brake, activating the light but actually not braking at all, to make him think I’m braking. This will make him slow down, creating the distance he needs to keep.
Actually breaking would of course be hazardous. I’ve often wished for a “you’re too close” button I could press instead, activating some new signal which is not brake lights to warn people they must keep their distance.
Well - but why DIDN’T the rear-ender keep a safe distance in the first place?
The “idiot” trying to create the necessary distance to the car behind was, maybe, actually thinking of the safety, while the tailgater definitely wasn’t. Tailgating on motorways is really high-risk and irresponsible behaviour.
Try the wiper fluid.
Well in our defense, that wasn’t at all clear in the original post.
