- Joined
- Aug 25, 2021
- Messages
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Tailgaters.
They approach from behind, so obviously are going faster than you, then just glue their noses to your back bumper. You speed up and they speed up to stay in position. You slow down, they slow down. I actually have stopped a couple of times in the past, just to see what they would do, and they also stopped, sat there for a while, then finally overtook and drove off. You can be on a straight, flat road with visibly nothing coming the other way for a thousand yards and they won't overtake.
There are two situations where it's particularly bad. One, if you're on a remote country road in the dark, in which case it is particularly creepy,
and two, when there's a slow vehicle ahead. So there's a tractor going at 30mph on a 60mph road, and cars keep building up behind it, then overtaking and accelerating away when a gap to overtake emerges. However once one of these individuals gets up behind the tractor, they're there until it turns off. Now anyone else has to overtake them both in one go to get away, and of course there are much fewer chances to do so and it's a much more aggressive and demanding manouevre with traffic coming the other way. They don't respond to brake checks, beeping or light flashing.
They behave as though they don't understand what they're doing is wrong. Sometimes you see people coming up alongside them, winding down their windows and shouting and shaking their fists, or occasionally one will happen to turn off and stop at the same place as you, and someone goes and confronts them and they act confused or as though they are the ones being wronged by their upbraiding.
When they are behind you and they have LED headlights at night that's even worse. You can flick your central mirror down, but who can be bothered to do that with the wing mirrors and then reset them? Occasionally you'll get one who sits behind you with their lights on full beam just for maximum infuriation.
Maybe they're wanting to conserve fuel by staying in the slipstream.
When there's a cop car behind you in the day you can see its markings (unless it's a plain one obviously), but at night, in a non-streetlit area all you can generally see is the headlights, so you are worried it's the cops
as well.
They approach from behind, so obviously are going faster than you, then just glue their noses to your back bumper. You speed up and they speed up to stay in position. You slow down, they slow down. I actually have stopped a couple of times in the past, just to see what they would do, and they also stopped, sat there for a while, then finally overtook and drove off. You can be on a straight, flat road with visibly nothing coming the other way for a thousand yards and they won't overtake.
There are two situations where it's particularly bad. One, if you're on a remote country road in the dark, in which case it is particularly creepy,
and two, when there's a slow vehicle ahead. So there's a tractor going at 30mph on a 60mph road, and cars keep building up behind it, then overtaking and accelerating away when a gap to overtake emerges. However once one of these individuals gets up behind the tractor, they're there until it turns off. Now anyone else has to overtake them both in one go to get away, and of course there are much fewer chances to do so and it's a much more aggressive and demanding manouevre with traffic coming the other way. They don't respond to brake checks, beeping or light flashing.
They behave as though they don't understand what they're doing is wrong. Sometimes you see people coming up alongside them, winding down their windows and shouting and shaking their fists, or occasionally one will happen to turn off and stop at the same place as you, and someone goes and confronts them and they act confused or as though they are the ones being wronged by their upbraiding.
When they are behind you and they have LED headlights at night that's even worse. You can flick your central mirror down, but who can be bothered to do that with the wing mirrors and then reset them? Occasionally you'll get one who sits behind you with their lights on full beam just for maximum infuriation.
Maybe they're wanting to conserve fuel by staying in the slipstream.
When there's a cop car behind you in the day you can see its markings (unless it's a plain one obviously), but at night, in a non-streetlit area all you can generally see is the headlights, so you are worried it's the cops
as well.
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