How Do You Deal With Tailgaters?

[rontaki]

As a kid driving my mom's Plymouth with worn rings, I had a great way to lose tailgaters. I just stomped the gas pedal,and when the thick cloud of oil smoke thinned enough to see behind me, they were gone!. I've considered putting a pump to squirt oil onto the hot exhaust, operated by push button, although just oil would probably also work.
Score one for ICE cars...

 

[rontaki]

A friend told me of a trick that I've never tried, nor do I know if it would work -
Rig up a golf ball to drop so it bounces under their car, supposedly it wil get trapped under the car and bounce between the car and the road until they stop.

 

[zzvyb6]

I've been thinkin about modifying my rear windshield washer jet so that it shoots used motor oil out the back. They hit their wipers and problem solved.

Sorry man, my injin musta burped or blowed up.

 

[lman]

A friend told me of a trick that I've never tried, nor do I know if it would work -
Rig up a golf ball to drop so it bounces under their car, supposedly it wil get trapped under the car and bounce between the car and the road until they stop.

I want to see that video.

 

[shooterdon]

So far, slowing down has worked. .

If I slow down, and make it easy for other driver to pass and the other driver does not pass….that is a red flag.

Hope never to face that problem.

 

[CATRAT66]

I admit that I drive fast and can’t stand it when people drive in the left lane and don’t check their mirrors and move over but I really don’t like is people who tailgate at 20 over the limit and when I move over they don’t pass
They want to go 80 but just don’t want to be first in line
I call them tire turds
And what about the people that you can watch for 10 miles following a semi and wait until you get five lengths behind them and they pull into the passing lane but maintain the same speed

 

[newbury]

As a kid driving my mom's Plymouth with worn rings, I had a great way to lose tailgaters. I just stomped the gas pedal, and when the thick cloud of oil smoke thinned enough to see behind me, they were gone!. I've considered putting a pump to squirt oil onto the hot exhaust, operated by push button, although just oil would probably also work.
Score one for ICE cars...

As an adult in 1974 driving my '66 Plymouth Valiant w/ slant 6 (and ~ 100K) I did the same. The darn thing was getting about 40 miles per quart of oil when I finally gave it to the junk yard.

 

[Runner]

I'm not speeding up to increase the distance from the tailgater, I increase the distance between me and the car ahead of me.

.....and, therefore, if the guy in front of you stops fast, you have more room to slow down more gently so the idiot behind you doesn't rear-end your car. Excellent defensive driving, you are controlling what you can (your stopping distance) and not trying to control what you can't (the distance between you and the idiot).

If more people would think like this we would all be better off.

 

[Runner]

you come up on a car, so obviously you were going faster than them, you pass and get next to them and they speed up, or, as soon as you get past them and move back into the right lane, they pass you, pull in, then slow down again. Gets a bit aggravating. But, just let it go.

What happens to me is, I will (for example) be entering a freeway and still accelerating when I merge, maybe doing 65. Someone comes up behind me doing 75. I'm still accelerating as they go by because I'm going to be doing 70. I'm not deliberately "racing" them or being a jerk, I'm just still in the process of accelerating up to my final speed.

Which brings up kind of a pet peeve:

You are on a four-lane and in the right lane. You move over to allow a car to merge, then that car gets in behind you and starts tailgating because he wants to go faster than you.

However, by this time, someone else has moved up beside you in the right
lane and you can't get back over. Now you're stuck in the left lane where everyone else want's to be going 80 and the guy you moved over for is behind you, pissed off because you're doing 70.

No good deed goes unpunished.

 

[MossRoad]

I usually keep a good distance, but my company Tundra has the adaptive CC which keeps you inside of the 2 second rule. (Now they are saying 3 seconds)
If I get behind somebody who can't make up their mind if they want to do 40 or 60 I back off, try to find a compromise speed but if they slow down again I just let the CC take over.

I had a similar experience which I've related before. He would pass, then slow down. At one point I got POed and pulled over. When I pulled back out he was parked a 1/4 mile down the road waiting for me. I still don't know WTF was going on but in hindsight I should have picked up the phone and called the cavalry.

When I was maybe 8 years old my parents, one sibling and I were coming back from two towns over late at night after a high school football game that one of my other siblings was in. It was raining and quite dark. As we were driving down the highway, some other car came up on our tail so close you couldn't see his headlights. My dad pulled over and the guy pulled ahead and pulled over and stopped about 1/4 mile up the road. My dad passed him, and the guy came up behind us again. So my dad again pulled over and let the guy pass, and again the guy pulled over and stopped about 1/4 mile up the road. So my dad did a u-turn across the grass median, and went the other way. Well, the guy did the same and came up on us again. So my dad repeated and so did the other guy. This happened three times.

The last time the guy passed us and pulled over and stopped ahead of us, my dad stayed stopped, he opened his door, stepped out into the rain in his Army trench coat, pulled his 1911 out of nowhere and fired a few shots towards the guy. I just remember the shock of seeing the flames shooting out the barrel, the boom boom boom, and my mom screaming. The guy took off, my dad got back in the car, set the gun between the two front seats, and said his most stern words I'd ever heard him say in my entire life....

"gosh darn it 'my mom's name', I shot over him to scare him."

He did another u-turn and we went home. I'll never forget that night....

And I'll never forget my sibling in the back seat sitting next to me slept through the whole thing.