Even without training, you are able to stop a massive bleeding by pressing something on the wound. Even without training, you can pull someone who is unconscious out of danger. Cars don’t explode. You can secure an accident site and prevent follow up accidents. You can check on the car passengers. How many are in there? Are they conscious? Can they get out? Is there a fire? These are all things the emergency services want to know. The fire brigade will take how long, maybe 15 minutes to get there? And they have to take a guess how many ambulances to send. With a life threatening injury, these 15 minutes make all the difference between life and death.
I can only recommend taking a first aid course. It is not difficult. They will teach you basic CPR, to prevent choking, how to use an AED. The instructor in my course told me was that if someone needs CPR, and does not receive it by a passerby, the ambulance will usually be too late. Could be a coworker, family member, a guy on the street. It’s one of the more valuable skills, IMHO.
I have no control over how some jackass who doesn’t obey the law will interpret my car’s signals. Maybe they think a right-hand signal is an offer for a duel to the death? Maybe they would treat a wave as a death threat against their family? Sure, that could “escalate” things, but the fault for that is still on the person doing the misinterpretation, not the one signaling.
If it’s a sudden deceleration, yes. If it’s a flash of the lights, then it’s just a standard signal. Hell, most newer cars these days are even set up so that any pressure on the break pedal will cause the break lights to flash on and off, specifically as an advance warning that actual breaking may be imminent.
The tailgater. Not only too close but aggressive and then not prepared. Break-checking only caused the accident because the guy was insanely close.
Whatever reason the front driver had for going slow(ish) in the left lane, he or she was not causing a problem. There was no crowding or reduced pace on the road. Tailgater could have stayed farther back and flicked lights or used horn. And they were passing an on-ramp, so it was reasonable for the front driver to be waiting to change lanes.
The guy in front was passing an active merge. He couldn’t just get over right then because the tailgater wanted him to. If he had refused a half-mile or a mile further down when he had space to get over, then pass him on the right if need be, but this guy was just an idiot.
Actually, you are. If someone runs up to you swinging an axe, you can certainly push them in front of a bus, or shoot them. It’s called self-defense, and is one of the few universal principles in law worldwide.
and “someone” has to be always someone else? my personal rule of thumb is that I stop and offer help if no one else is around*.
the approach “I would anyway do more harm and therefore not help” is a sad one, imho.
* admittedly so far only cases without the need to use my forgotten and never used knowledge of the mandatory first aid course as part of the driving school. the worst one was a driver under shock (he missed a turn and found a ditch instead) and I called the ambulance and talked to him until the pros arrived
You have no control over others actions, but you do have the opportunity to not make an already dangerous situation worse. The people who will see what you’re doing and actually think “hey, I’m too close to this person, I’ll back off” will do it on their own; they’re paying enough attention and aren’t beyond reason with aggression. But, again, you don’t generally need to warn them, they will do it on their own.
Then you have the indignant tailgaters who are too close, but don’t think they are. You’re not going to change their minds by either tapping brakes or slowing down. They will keep at the distance they are at convinced they are doing nothing wrong. And if you’re slowing down, you’re just causing annoyance for everyone else down the road and potentially causing problems for everyone if the traffic system is at or above capacity.
Then there is the aggressive tailgaters. They will take your actions as a “HOW DARE THIS PERSON TELL ME WHAT TO DO” and they will start driving more aggressively, making it more dangerous for everyone on the road.
I’ve been on all sides of this, tailgater, warner, brake checker, and now defensive driver. In my teens I was a very aggressive driver, and I was the asshole. I would get angry when people would tap their brakes or slow down. Then I mellowed out and went through the other phases; following that I would warn people. But then I realized that it doesn’t work and could actually put me in more danger, and I realized that I was also doing this out of self-righteousness. I was doing it because I was getting that “telling others they are wrong” high and that, from my observations, it was no safer and not effective.
Seriously, it’s a silly thing to do, and it is not safe or defensive driving. The defensive thing to do is just let them go ahead of you and shrug it off. Telling a dick they are a dick is just going to amplify the dickishness, not subdue it.
Your number two and three tools are great escalation tools. They are going to make someone who’s already aggressive more aggressive and more dangerous. You are not removing danger with your third tool, if this is a person who is aggressively driving, their aggression is already clouding all judgement and you are fueling it. The other driver will start to look for whatever way they can to get around you if you slow down too much and they pretty much always will perform unsafe lane changes (the worst situation to get an aggressive driver into) and they will probably try to cut you off to “teach you a lesson” in their mind. That cutting off can lead to them clipping your car, potentially spinning you out.
Seriously, it’s not worth it. You will not get through to people blinded by aggression, and adding more non-defensive tactics onto dealing with them will just escalate the situation.
My tactic is that I’m already not driving at the top of my safe speed zone, I’m driving in the middle of it; giving me room to speed up and down as I need to. I will get out of the tailgater’s way as quickly as I safely can (making proper signaled lane changes and adjusting my speed to match that of the other lanes). I’d rather be safe than dead here. I don’t need to tell them they are being a dick, they aren’t going to listen. And being told that they will just get angry.
And to those of you who will respond with “oh, but you’re letting others roll over you! that’s just not fair!” or other similar fairness or justice arguments: yeah, so what. Life’s not fair. Let the dicks be dicks and take care of yourself and don’t increase the danger to others. It’s not my place or your place to tell others that they are being an asshole on the road; and while I don’t like letting some jackass do dangerous shit on the road even if I were to tell them it’s not going to change them.
Man, someone else is doing something shitty, maybe I should do something shitty too! That has worked in every other area of life and human society in every case.
Not a car driver; twenty years on bikes every day without a crash (not counting racetrack and off-road whoopsies). A car sitting on my rear wheel is not just a potential hazard, it is an immediate lethal threat.
All of those tailgater-discouraging techniques only come out of the box if it is not possible to simply move out of the way.
As mentioned, the object is to remove the danger as quickly as possible, not to exact any sort of “justice”. If I can’t get them off my wheel in a very short time, then I’m slowing down until the situation becomes safe, even if that requires a dead stop.
Given the pace I tend to cruise at, the only times I get tailgated are when I’m in heavy traffic (in which case I can usually just lanesplit my way clear at the first safe opportunity; legal in my country) or when the tailgater is pushing the speed to serious racetrack levels. Speeding up still further is generally neither a safe nor legal option.
I remember a white pickup with a camper tailgating me, so I tapped the brake enough to light it briefly. I didn’t keep in the lane, though. I let him by, and he was so angry about it that he played games for a while: hiding in front of a truck, and when I went to pass the truck, TA DA! Assholes gotta asshole. Then he cranked his window down, and tossed a rock out that hit my car. I got off the road and called the State Police, even giving his Virginia plate (NSL-243), but they said they couldn’t do anything. (“Are you sure he threw the rock?” “Well, he rolled his window down, did something with his arm, and the rock bounced on the road before hitting my car.” “Gee, I dunno. Could have been Martians.”)
It was a couple of decades ago, and I still remember the asshole who didn’t care if he killed us both.
Sure, if you’re in immediate mortal danger, but if it’s just someone being reckless and you can get yourself out of the situation and others can do the same you are most definitely not justified to push that person under the bus or shoot them. Even some cases where people are in danger but not mortal danger you are also not justified to do harm to the other person.
And this is why you don’t fuck around with angry or aggressive drivers. I’ve had similar happen to me, near misses of getting clipped as they tried to cut me off. It’s just not worth it. Let them go, because it’s not worth getting someone who is a firey ball of rage more angry; it’s better to be not dead.
It’s worth noting that, in driver’s ed, you’re instructed to deal with tailgaters by slowing down so they can pass you. But for someone tailgating that closely, if you just slow down by taking your foot off the gas, they might not even notice you are slowing down until they ram right into you. So how, then, do you slow down and let them know you’re doing so?
by removing yourself from the situation. 99% of the time slowing down works, especially if you are cognizant of how merging works and can stay in the correct lane. the times when slowing down is an escalation is exactly why i choose to drive a fast car–i’d rather chance a speeding citation by getting out of the way of a dingus then try and ‘teach’ them anything.
I think “running up to strangers on the sidewalk swinging an axe in one hand” is a fair definition of causing mortal danger. I don’t think you can excuse that kind of behaviour with the term “being reckless.” It’s not quite the same situation as roaring up behind someone at 70+ mph and getting very very close, but then the front driver didn’t throw anyone under a bus either. He quite reasonably touched his brakes, either to signal thet the following car was too close, or because he needed to slow slightly for some reason we don’t know, or because, fearing that the extremely bad driver behind was about to cause an accident, he wanted to minimize the impact by slowing. The fact that the moron behind him can’t drive isn’t really his fault, is it? A competent driver, following at a safe distance, wouldn’t have wrecked his vehicle so spectacularly.
