Yes, the driver at the rear is guilty of that from tailgating.
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I always assumed they got that close to read your license plate number. I know my vision isnât great for text at a distance so Iâd personally have to be fairly close to make everything out. It used to be easy to spot the Crown Vics, but now with the Chargers and the hand full of other vehicles we have rolling around I tend to cautious if I see a vehicle I donât know.
Some bits have limits. The general traffic speed isnât that much higher than a quiet UK motorway- Trucks at 56, cars at 70-85ish. The driving standards are generally better though, much less dawdling and better lane discipline.
We did have the police using our van as a mobile hiding device to pull other drivers in thoughâŚ
This doesnât happen unless both drivers behave badly.
If youâre so close to the vehicle in front that youâll crash if they brake, then youâre too close. On the other hand, if youâre in the passing lane with room in front (a quarter-mile in this case) and somebody is trying to pass you, then let them get down the road and on with their life.
Thereâs no way of knowing whether the tailgater who lost this battle is an aggressive jerk who does this all the time, or a usually-considerate person who was legitimately in a hurry and just misjudged the encounter with Mister Amateur Law Enforcement Rolling Road Block.
So fuck that brake checker. And, probably, the checkee as well. And non-robot drivers.
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I have one running every time we visit London because of the incidence of cyclist fraud (they push their bike into your car and claim you crashed into them.) I fitted the camera after seeing a Youtube from Russia where the guy does this, the guy in the car just points to the camera, and the cyclist runs away.
Fender scratches, perhaps a hood dent, better than a claim for injury from a Bulgarian with his two mates as âwitnessesâ.
The video certainly suggests it from the driverâs behavior.
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whut? this would be somewhere in the ballpark of 60 billion US$ (based on the nominal estimated GDP of 2016 from Wikipedia) or about 40 % of the global internet ad market
Post canât be empty!
Dude, I was jokingâŚ
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As god as my witness, anytime I have to through some really tight area, say one lane due to construction with concrete barriers on either side, I grip the wheel and say, âStay on target!â
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I have not seen this mentioned yet, although @thatspecial came close:
I donât use cruise control, but my understanding is that the main way to get out of it and return to manual (pedal?) control is to tap on the brakes.
Thereâs a car in the passing lane, passing, and a car in the right lane, and a car on the on-ramp about to merge into the right lane. Thatâs the sort of situation where I would either speed up or slow down (depending on conditions) to make sure I wasnât next to the right-hand car, in case they swerved into the left lane without looking because they just realized thereâs a car merging into their lane. I would make the speed change even if I knew that the trajectory of all the cars was such that no one had to worry about the situation. Not everyone can judge distances/speed well. I canât know if the guy to my right is a good driver or not. Better safe than sorry.
So, if I were using cruise control, I would want it off at that point because I would want to be able to choose how to alter my speed instantaneously.
Do I think thatâs what happened here? Probably not, but thereâs no way to prove otherwise.
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Yeah. Plausible deniability.
There are many reasons why the car in front of you might have to tap their brakes. If you canât react without crashing, youâre driving too close.
I generally detest tailgaters. The only exception is when Iâm in traffic and leaving a sensible braking gap, and someone decides they are going to use that space to pull out in front of me and cut me up (I seriously hate the way that people drive in Seattle, the lane discipline is awful).
I know I should just be sensible, drop back and reestablish that gap until it inevitably happens again, but I have a stupid side of me that says that those people are just fine with being boxed in, so sometimes I donât drop back at all. Itâs going to bite me in the arse some time, I suspect.
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Everything would be fine if people would just accept that they wonât be able to go as fast as they want to go every moment they are driving. The problem is that on a road with a 65 mph speed limit people who want to go 80 mph in the left lane get upset when there is someone going 72 mph in the left lane passing people going 67 mph in the right lane. There is no obligation for someone who is already speeding to speed MORE but too many people perceive such an obligation and freak out when it is not met.
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I remember looking up the rules for the HOV lanes in WA state, because I like driving in them when I can, itâs the nicest place to drive, but I wonât speed excessively, or pull over into the âfastâ normal lane to the right when Iâm getting tailgated (because it should be going faster, if anything). Turns out in that situation you can get ticketed for speeding and/or impeding traffic flow. Damned if you do, damned if you donâtâŚ
How did Donald Trump get into this conversation?
so, 1/100 of the time, you try to kill the occupants of at least two vehicles because you donât give a fuck? Youâre joking right?
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Red Green has some tips for discouraging tailgaters:
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There hasnât been enough time for monkey brain to evolve to understand that running games that work at 10mph are not a good idea at 70mph inside two tonnes of metal.
I hope, sincerely, that when self driving cars come in around 2020 - and I will be in the queue - people convicted of repeated tailgating, dangerous overtaking and the like will simply be banned from manual driving for life. This issue is going to have to be addressed because self driving cars are going to have to be able to deal with people who have passed driving tests, and people who have not. Some kind of electronic license is going to be needed so that people legally allowed to drive cars can get in, plug in a set of controls and take over. But this also gives us scope to disqualify people psychologically unsuited to drive, without a civil liberties argument. Sure you can buy the biggest Lexus out and travel around in it. You just wonât be allowed to touch a steering wheel.
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The âpassing lane onlyâ laws vary from state to state. http://www.mit.edu/~jfc/right.html
