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I was on a 3 pane highway going interstate. Doing 80 in a 65 on the fast lane. Big rig in the middle lane. Slowly gaining and will pass the bog rig.
Then a pickup is coming up in the fast lane TOO FAST. Easily 100mph. She tailgates me. Now boxxed in with me in front and the big rig on her right. A sane person would go in the third lane and pass us since zero other cars around. But no.
She lays on her horn and starts swaying with impatience.
So I match speed with the big rig. Maintaining the box. She honks ways more and sways even more. Shaking her fist at me.I maintain it for another 2 minutes until my wife gets concerned she’ll rear end us and we end up spinning off the highway or under the big rig.
I give in and speed up past the big rig and change lanes to her wacko pass. They speed off.
Yeah it’s never worth it. You never know what people will do.
Truly. I’ve been on the motorway before with a dude seemingly angry about something I did, not sure what, that he was chasing me across the motorway even if I went from lane 4 to 1 and back he was there.
Some people are insane. Best to avoid them even if you can handle yourself as some people won’t let it go and not worth the fight if you’re not immediately in danger.
Is this lady using her phone while driving, after speeding by 20MPH and thinking it’s a flex? If she uses it at 20MPH I’d bet she uses it at 70 MPH too! Couldn’t this have waited until she was safely off the road?
I expect this is sarcasm (can’t know, because of Poe’s)
But for anyone genuinely thinking this you can see the dashcam source in her glasses reflection.
Kevin vs Karen.
It’s good to slow down to get the traitor off your ass, but be careful: our traitor zoomed around us and cut us off out of spite. My girlfriend pointed out that behavior like that will get that worthless dumbfuck shot one day.
What to do when you have a tailgater behind you:
- Foot off the gas.
- Wait until the tailgater tries to overtake you.
- PIT maneuver.
- Keep driving safely.
This is why I’m in favor of public transit. So many people should not be on the road. This goes for the granny under the speed limit drivers and the insane road ragers.
I’ve never understood why people pick on drivers under the speed limit. It’s called a limit, why do we expect people to be over it?
There are speed limits in both directions, in every jurisdiction I’m familiar with it’s illegal to drive both too fast and too slow, to exceed the posted speed limit or to drive so slowly that it impedes other traffic.
Oh, that’s very interesting. Where I live there are only upper speed limits on most roads except highways. On other roads you can drive as slowly as you want, though everyone will overtake you if they can or honk at you if you don’t.
Where I live there are only upper speed limits on most roads except highways. On other roads you can drive as slowly as you want,
Are you sure that you really don’t have any traffic rules against causing a hazard or impeding traffic flow by being too slow? That seems both unusual and unsafe to me.
Depending where it is, a figure of speech up to a certain point of where they actual enforce it, most cops don’t even go the speed limit on some roads and highways.
They’re low and out dated as fuck, and mostly just a money grab, again, depending on the street and the limit, for example excluding in front of schools and parks
because they are assholes who think anyone going slower than them is stupid and they are very smart and the speed limit should not apply to such very smart people.
Once she gets to work she finds a sign taped to the back of the car saying “honk it’s my birthday”
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When people ride my ass while I am doing (at least) the speed limit I just take my foot off the gas to gently slow down until they go around me. If its only one lane then I will go under the speed limit. Im petty too like that
It’s not just petty, it’s safety.
You can’t influence the size of the safety margin between you and the car behind you. But you can influence the speed at which the person behind you slams into you in case of an accident, by reducing the speed that both of you drive.
When I drive in deer country, especially at night, I will always slow up when encountering a tailgater because I might have to brake hard for an animal and don’t want to hit a deer AND/OR get rear ended - going slower means they will at least hit me less hard. They can go around if they don’t like my speed. Also, statistics show that drivers that stay well behind other vehicles have far fewer accidents. Finally, traffic tends to travel at the speed of the slowest drivers on the road, so they gain little on our curvy, hilly two lane roads.
I just let them pass you. Not worth some lunatic you piss off even more and end up shooting you.
If it’s a 2 lane per side road the best way to get them to pass you is to not break check them but just take your foot off the gas until they get frustrated enough to just go around but this contextually sounds like a single lane sitch which you are correct is dangerous.
I’m a school bus driver and the course material (and test questions) for the CDL state this explicitly. If someone is tailgating you, you slow down. Tailgaters are gonna tailgate no matter what, and slowing down means the damage will be less if they do happen to hit you. If that makes them mad tough tittie (the course material does not use “tough tittie” but you can tell they wanted to).
The great irony of people who tailgate school buses is that WE CAN’T EVEN FUCKING SEE YOU BACK THERE. Even in your fantasy world of the person in front of you feeling pressured and speeding up (which never ever actually happens), it can’t possibly happen if they don’t even know you’re there.
Unfortunately for some, that pressure is real and entirely illogical. For the longest time my wife would start getting anxious and frustrated when someone tailgated her and would start to speed up… Only to contue getting tailgated by the same person. Took a lot of insistence from me to not play their stupid game for her to realize that not only was it stupid to speed up for them, but more dangerous and entirely illegal to start speeding just because of a tailgater.
I’m not doubting you at all, but how dumb does one have to be to tailgate a bus? As if you can force a bus into anything.
If you tailgate a larger vehicle, all you do is put yourself into mortal danger.
how dumb does one have to be to tailgate a bus?
Pretty fucking dumb but it’s a low bar. The only upside to tailgating a larger vehicle like a bus is that our stopping distance is a lot greater so the tailgater is less likely to slam into us.
This is correct. It’s never worth it.
I slow down to allow them to pass me safely and easily.
I would fully agree that confronting a lunatic face to face is dangerous, but the chances of getting shot for driving slow is next to zero.
Just let them go, because they are eventually gonna crash into a cop car and then you’ll see the grest confrontation between fascist pig vs unhinged sov-cit in real time, great show!
https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/driver-shot-at-for-going-too-slow-eyewitness-says/804586303/
Boom, it happened one time so it will happen every time
But is not zero
people in my region have been shot at for flashing their lights at someone to tell them their lights were off. that’s why i think escalating a scenario where one or both of you are wielding/controlling deadly weapons/machinery is the only way to go.
This comment section is a very good case study in why better public transportation is absolutely necessary: a lot of you should not ever drive.
😭 I see the error of my thinking Comrade Stalin. I will do better in the future
Fun little Stalin fact: when the Bolsheviks first took over the Kremlin, food was a scarce commodity. Stalin faked being sick so he could have a whole chicken to himself every day.
This one made me bust out laughing. Such a perfect combination.
The previous one is great too. Both new to me, at least.
Using phone while driving… Great.
Fuck everyone who ever touches their phone while the vehicle is on. This shit is not okay, ever.
I have some great news for you. Look at what took effect yesterday in my state! Using a mobile device, including at a red light, is now a primary offense (you’ll get pulled over for just that).
This just applies to PA, but it’s a pretty big state with a population between Sweden and the Netherlands, so it’s not nothing!
Doesn’t matter if it’s not enforced. We have no holding phone rules in GA and I routinely see people using their phones while driving.
Worse, too often these laws are selectively enforced only when cops are looking for an excuse to profile minorities and poorer drivers.
yeah i was gonna say. they enforced the no texting law for maybe a year here, then they just started using “I thought I saw them texting” as probable cause to pull over anyone they wanted.
They put up cameras to detect phone and seatbelt offences here in Queensland a couple of years ago. It’s been quite lucrative for the state.
I live in PA and I’m not holding my breath for this shit to ever be enforced. I’m a school bus driver and last year I had a local cop pass me when I was stopped with my red flashers on letting kids off the bus. He was driving with one hand and looking at his phone in the other - never even saw me.
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The phone is clearly mounted on the dashboard.
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It’s not uncommon for people to record their whole trip for social media, not just take to a picture.
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This caption could have been pasted over a completely unrelated screenshot of someone else’s video for all we know.
Don’t touch your phone while driving, but also, don’t believe everything you see on social media.
It’s not uncommon for people to record their whole trip for social media, not just take to a picture.
That’s still a distraction. Even if they don’t intend to upload the entire recording they are paying less attention to the road in order to pay attention to their “performance”.
On your last point… It’s still damaging because it normalises it. UK has very harsh stance on this and you’d get in shit even for point 1. There should be zero tolerance on this. They’re a dickhead driver regardless. Two dickheads don’t make it right.
UK is a paper tiger on this.
Incorrect, in the UK you can touch/use the phone if it’s mounted in a cradle. Touch it un-cradled though and wham that’s instant points even if it was out of battery and turned off
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hevicle
Given the size bloat, I think heavy vehicle => hevicle is appropriate.
I’m a school bus driver and many of my coworkers use their phones (talking, texting and even doom scrolling) while driving a bus - sometimes even when they have kids aboard. And these buses have internal cameras that are always recording! I don’t understand how they’re not fired or at least suspended for it, but I suppose the driver shortage has something to do with it.
tbf, going 20 in a 50 zone is probably not a terrible situation to be multitasking in. not at all like multitasking at 50 in a 50 zone
- Escalates the angry driver situation.
- Takes photos while driving.
Neither driver here is in the right.
I don’t need to be right.
Fuck you Kevin you piece of shit.
Who is Kevin?
Did you even read the post youre commenting in?
Didn’t notice the name 😔
going 70 in a 50
Both drivers deserve to lose their license
That’s easy to agree with in isolation, but many times on the main roads near me the normal flow of traffic in the slow lane can be 20 over. Driving at or below the speed limit would create a significantly more dangerous situation than cruising along at the same speed as the nearest several cars.
Yeah, you’d be operating in a more legal way, and the faster drivers around you should be able to safely deal with it, but that doesn’t mean the risk isn’t there.
This. Speed limit laws are bullshit and their selective enforcement is proof of it.
The dangerous drivers are the ones that are impeding the flow (i.e. going well below the speed limit when road/weather conditions don’t necessitate it; cruising in a passing lane, etc) or driving unpredictably/erratically (cutting people off, weaving, etc).
Not necessarily the speeders, though there can certainly be some overlap, particularly in the latter group.
But speeders are the ones that get ticketed over while those asshats just crash into schoolbusses.
This is a bullshit talking point used by psychopaths to try to justify their antisocial behavior. If the people around you are going so fast that just doing the speed limit becomes unsafe, they are the ones wholly responsible for creating those unsafe conditions. They are driving faster than the conditions (and let’s be real, their own ability) would reasonably allow for, they are the only ones that should be held responsible for the consequences of their freakish behavior.
Again, that sounds good on paper. In reality, I turn into an on-ramp and I’m approaching a line of cars going 75 mph. There happens to be a sign that says they should be limiting themselves to 55 mph.
If I merge at 75mph, the state of the roadway is essentially unchanged. If I merge at 55mph, I am introducing a new risk that was not there previously.
The state of the road in your scenario is already unsafe because of the people doing 75. Every. Single. Study. Shows that there are less crashes and they are less lethal when everyone just slows the fuck down. But none of you entitled fuckwits will accept even the tiniest bit of personal inconvenience for the sake of your own safety and that of everyone around you, so we have to live in fucking Mad Max instead.
Cool, they are the ones that will get in trouble for the accident that I am still involved in. I’d much rather not be involved in an accident than be “right”.
Is this about safety, or is this about blind adherence to the law?
Every study we have shows that the roads are safer, there are less crashes and they are less deadly when everyone just goes slower. But apparently you would rather risk getting turned into a rorschach splat than advocate for the thing that actually makes roads safer.
Probably not. It could be in the middle of nowhere or on a road where the speed limit hasn’t been evaluated and the state default is 50. There are tons of roads like that in California or even some where the limit is in the 30s but it really shouldn’t be and locals are in the 60s usually.
You, The Master Driver, are amply equipped to decide what the true speed limit should be.
Well if you operate a death machine it would be realy nice if you could follow the rules and not kill somebody. Of course the rules should be reasonable but being unable to follow them means you should not be operating a death machine
There’s no reason to follow unreasonable rules even when you’re driving a death machine. Especially when not following the rules has an essentially near 0 difference in hurting someone with your cage of death(not trying to be sarcastic with cage of death). Many of these roads are designed for much higher speed limits but just have not been evaluated by the government for their speed limit and possibly never will be or they will be evaluated at a much lower than reasonable speed. For example the speed limit of most California freeways is 65 traffic moves at 80 regularly and sometimes when people are feeling frisky up to 90. Neither of those speeds are unreasonable when everyone around you is also doing them and people are used to those situations or understand they will be in those situations. A great example is Germany where parts of their freeways have no speed limit where people are doing in excess of 120 mph and semis are also using it at under 60.
I don’t think losing their license is the right approach. I don’t think scolding them is the approach either. I think most people don’t realize that driving is a cooperative event. And to not only accept that and also expand on it helps most road rage go away.
70 in a 50 zone. Doesn’t matter if its km/h or mph, that’s just idiotic.
exactly, the engineers should never have made a road with that big of a discrepancy between safe speed and listed speed limit
Was gonna cite 85th percentile speed but TIL on drawbacks
The engineers only make the designed safe speed. Government officials make the listed limit. It used to be EXTREMELY popular for government official to knock 20-25% off the design limit of the road, ironically so they can tell everyone how safe they were.
Traffic engineers in the US make too wide roads that psychologically encourages speeding, the posted speed limit doesn’t matter unless police dedicates significant resources to enforcing it
Everywhere in my town was 25mph until about 10 years ago.
A local politician got a few speeding tickets and went nuts over it, now it varies from 25-60mph. Engineers were brought in to advise on safe limits.
Him getting those tickets was one of the best things that ever happened to me. It was so miserable driving so slow on big open roads. I could probably sit down and figure up an insane amount of time I’ve saved over the last decade (if I weren’t an idiot).
Not so great for people walking or cycling though. Higher speeds mean more serious and fatal collisions.
Where these modes of transport mix, 20mph is becoming the default choice in western European countries, there is a global declaration on this. If roads feel like they’re made for higher streets: that’s bad infrastructure design.
https://www.fiafoundation.org/news/stockholm-declaration-focuses-on-reducing-urban-speed
No one is traveling on a bicycle or walking here. These roads are empty, there’s nothing there. I live in one of the most rural places in the country (United States).
It was seriously 20 miles straight with no houses, wide road, 25 mph. In residential areas there are still 25 mph speed limits.
On our 4 lane road, bicycles are not allowed, yet the speed limit was only 35-40.
Where there are sidewalks, the speed limit is 25 mph. If there are buildings, 25 mph.
Empty roads with nothing but fucking trees should not be 25 mph.
In all of my years driving on those roads, I don’t even think I’ve ever seen a bicycle. A couple of those tiny, slow motorcycles, maybe. I guess they call them scooters
And why do you think this is the case? Could it possibly be because the infrastructure is completely designed for cars, and using anything else is just not safe so you’d have to be a madman to go with these options?
Imran sure, I get rural, cars are good for rural areas, but not for towns etc.
Well, I mean, if a person wants to ride a bike 40 miles for 4 1/2 hours to the nearest Walmart I’m sure they could.
About 4,500 people live here and most of them have cars or they’re stuck.
We have public transit but about 30 people use it. My neighbor said it’s a 2.5 hour ordeal to go to the post office when he could be there and back in 20 minutes in a car. He got old and lost his license.
I’m seeing more cities in the US jump onto “20 is Plenty” too!
Engineers should absolutely include traffic calming features to get people to naturally slow down, but everyone should drive the limit.
Speed kills, kinetic energy is not linear.
Cars are tonnes of metal hurtling down the road. Thousands upon thousands die every year, and since the increased prevalence of massive US style trucks fatalities have RISEN, undoing decades of progress. (Both in the US, and elsewhere)
People driving 20 over the limit are arseholes (or have been influenced by car centric infrastructure and culture). Change my mind.
Speeding is never okay. Just that lots of people have convinced themselves it’s no big deal.
Edit because of downvotes: https://www.bts.gov/content/motor-vehicle-safety-data
Y’all are really justifying some shitty behaviour. Yeah, I get it, streets are designed shittily, and feels like it’s fine to speed (especially, from what I can see, in the US), but this doesn’t absolve you from doing the right thing.
Like, if it were 5 (km/h) over, I could perhaps forgive you. But downvoting me for suggesting 20 mph over is arsehole behaviour? You don’t deserve a licence.
Fuck these carbrains putting their feelings over completely savable lives.
USA is cooked (and Australia, somewhat cooked, since people are buying ridiculously sized cars here too).
Don’t speed, you fuckwits. Better yet, take public transport if you live in a city with cilivised transportation (obviously, not your fault if it doesn’t exist).
20 over the speed limit? that’s ridiculous no one should be driving over 25
I get this is a joke, but speed limits shouldn’t be set by politicians (which I’m hearing apparently is/was a thing?). Politicians have a role to play in getting regulations standards re-written by people who understand the decades of research on this.
Speeding is mostly a design issue, but I still expect people actually follow the rules.
Strong Towns, NotJustBikes, City Beautiful, Practical Engineering, among others have made great videos on this topic.
A lot of people justify speeding, and it’s kinda dumb, if you ask me.
Just because you “feel” it’s safe, doesn’t mean it actually is.
Plus, there’s a fantastic way to reduce road deaths, just have fewer cars, switch to public transport, but that takes a long time to implement if the political will doesn’t exist.
I disagree. There are two roads near me with a limit of 55 mph, and traffic on those roads regularly moves at 75-80. Driving 55 becomes dangerous when all of the other traffic is going so much faster, because nobody expects you to be that slow. You risk getting rear-ended, and if traffic is heavy, people who end up behind you now have to merge into a much faster lane of traffic to get around you.
Why don’t they confiscate driving licences and imprison all the criminals who are driving 20-25mph dangerously over the limit?
If everyone is driving that fast and there aren’t accidents happening consistently then the posted limit does not reflect the reality of the road.
Or the road design doesn’t facilitate compliance with the speed limit. This is how policy and guidance on road infrastructure talks about these issues.
You ever tried to pull over an entire freeway full of cars at once?
A single cop car on the side of the road can get everybody to magically follow the speed limit.
nah, it just gets them to slow to 20 over the limit here
That’s really dependant on location. I have had plenty of road trips up and down the I5 where groups of cars pass cops on the side of the road going 80, and no one slows down and the cops do nothing. Source: I’m one of those drivers.
same on I10. that bit in texas where the limit goes up to 80 is nice tho
For a minute, maybe. Foot goes back down when the cop’s out of view in the mirrors.
Not personally, no - but the police would only need to catch a handful each day to get things moving a little more safely in the area.
Throw people in jail for driving too fast? That seems pretty extreme.
It’s hard to police speeding on a highway. Typically if you do get pulled over for speeding, it’s because you’re going way faster than those around you. So even in a 55, if everyone’s doing 80, you’ve gotta be doing 95 or more for a cop to single you out and arrest you. (Or maybe the cop has a quota to meet.) And where I live, local cops can’t use radar, so it’s hard to prove how fast you were going.
And then if you do get arrested, you’re most likely to get a ticket and points on your license. Get enough points and they’ll take away your license, but that means you’ve been caught repeatedly. And points expire eventually, plus if you go to your court date and plead not guilty, a lot of the time the judge will just remove the points. So a speeding ticket from years ago generally won’t have any bearing on your life except for the cost of the ticket.
So within reason, you can pretty much speed all the time consequence-free ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
All fair points for a motorway/highway/freeway/whatever. I’d mistakenly thought the previous post was referring to a smaller local road with a 55mph limit.
I don’t really care so much about what speed people do on motorways, but I have a massive problem with people doing 40-60mph in a 20-30mph limit residential area. Bear in mind where I live in the UK, the cars are driving 2 metres from the front door of everyone’s houses.
Because the road design at fault, not people.
Make roads narrower, and people will drive slower
I live out in the sticks, and if I don’t go 70, it will take me forever to get where I need to go. Also everyone else is going 70, so the people doing 50 are creating an unsafe situation. It’s the wild west out here.
Love reading threads about driving cause everyone is very upset for no discernible reason.
Driving is inherently stressful. Hell, merely being around cars is proven to negatively impact your health: https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/newsroom/editorial/are-you-noticing-the-harmful-noise
Driving is dangerous, and intentionally making it more dangerous deserves anger
The beauty of this comment is that it could be in support of either position.
anger
Is a big reason why it’s dangerous
I’ll do something similar to the OP. If I’m doing 29 in a 25 and you ride my ass, we will now do 24 in a 25. I like to think I’ve improved the safety of the local roadway. I won’t negotiate with terrorists.
This is why we should move the horb somewhere and have great big spikes on the steering wheel - the danger should have never been outsourced to others.
I get, i know it’ll never take off, but the current madness of 2T shockers is indefensible to me
Driving seems to bring out the second-worst in people.
