Kaz

Armando, funny should mention Saturns. A few days ago heading south to San Diego I netted me a Saturn that wanted to run with me.

I remember way back in 1989 when I had a Mustang GT, I was driving on 495, a beltway around Wash DC. when this gentleman in a very, very nice black 911 Turbo slant nose pulled up behind me. Now I was 18 and as red blooded and ready to race anything as they come but I wasn't stupid. I politely moved over and let him by with no intention of downshifting. When he got along side me, I looked over, and he gave me a sign to follow along, which I did. He, for the most part, allowed me to keep up with him and believe me, even with my modified 5.0L it was a chore to stay within 10 car lenghts but we had a lot of fun. We crossed over from Virginia into the Marlyand side, he waved, I waved and that was it. See, now that's fun, it's not a problem and everyone was on the same page.

K

Tabor

Mankind has lost the battle. Enjoy the car.

996cab.com

How odd and re-assuring to hear that there are amany other prople who experience this amazing phenomina. In the UK I get this all the time. It got worst a couple of days ago when a driver infront refused to move over. Instead he applied his barkes hard from 100mph down to 60mph. I was fortunate to be alert at the moment and so overtook him using the slow lane and gave him a taste of his medicine by braking from 70mph down to 20mph!. Poor lad was so shaken he came off next junction.

My take on life is simple, "do to others what you would like done to you". I always punish anyone who treats me mean on the road.
Careless drivers can kill and often do however they never seem to feel they need educating. I always educate them, the easy or hard way.

Have nice day you all!

Graham

I understand your 'rage' in this situation, but having been there, done that, got the t-shirt, I'd say that this IS CARELESS driving! In the UK you get away with a bit of road-rage - in the US someone will take a shot at you. Also, in the eyes of the law, you would probably get treated far more harshly than the perp...

Now consider this, what would you have done if the guy couldn't stop and you caused a huge accident? Not so clever then is it?

I personally prefer the get past and leave them in the dust approach or better still, just roll off the accelerator and become annoyingly slow as soon as they decide to glue themselves to my tail again.

(The other approach, not that I condone it, is to keep your foot on the accelerator and brush the brakes with the other ... just enough to put the lights on. You'll see the guy hit the brakes ... you just won't have to worry about being hit up the rear or being classed as totally reckless.)

Road-rage - just try to be big about it and ignore it...

Graham (from the UK ...)

Kaz

I suppose the line between road rage and having a little fun at a hapless drivers expense is a thin one. My strategy is usually to be there and gone before a driver can even react but on those occasions where I do get hung up, I certainly avoid expressing rage from the rear. I get up in front and just make my Porsche really, really wide in an oh so casual kind of way. Kind of like a big game of Tetris where they never get clear, until I decide to move on. Childish I know.

K

996cab.com

I understand your 'rage' in this situation, but having been there, done that, got the T-shirt, I'd say that this IS CARELESS driving! In the UK you get away with a bit of road-rage - in the US someone will take a shot at you...

Graham,
Offcourse you are right and in the eyes of the law I certainly would get the harsher treatment. We all live in societies where does who do well in life are seen as easy targets from those who just refuse to be ambitious enough to achieve the same as 'those doing well enough to drive a nice car'.

You are right again about the US, however I do believe one adapts to ones environment and therefore I would probably take your approach in the US.
In the UK, we British are very good at begrudging those who do well as if they had input in our doing well.

The point I am making is, 'that lad' had no reason to give me a hard time other than the fact that I was a sports car driver and in his eyes it was fair to put my life and his at risk. Had I been driving a lorry or van, I suspect he would have moved over, no probs.

I do however believe that the next encounter with 'that lad' would result in him thinking twice about putting others and his life at risk.

No need to be a victim ALL THE TIME. Life really, is too short!

alex_95_cab

I'm in the SF Bay area and I travel across a bridge every day. Standard driving behaviour here seems to be to tail-gate you in 70 mile an hour traffic when its clear to the idiot tail gating that theres no where for me to go in front. At first I tried lightly tapping my brakes but I had some seriously pissed off drivers (one guy even tried to run me out of my lane later). I've found a much better option is to do what I call the "tourist driver" routine. Just casually slow down and look around me with a confused look on my face like I dont recognize the place. People just don't know how to react to this cause they can't figure out whether or not your doing it on purpose. It works every time.

brandon

Great topic Robert! I suppose that the name for the behavior that you are describing would be "immaturity". I would venture to say that most (if not all) of the posters on this board have a degree of immaturity (channeled differently than these "other drivers"...perhaps). It's that same immaturity that makes us slow down in front of tailgaters, drive faster than the legal limit, play "tetris" with the other cars (which I too can be very good at - my OWN immaturity). Bottom line is, it's tough to take the moral high ground on this one unless you're perfect.
That said, I think it could be that many of the "dislikeable" driver actions you see are people that 1.) Like your car and 2.)Want to be recognized. I've found that making eye contact (yes, actually NOT pretending I don't see them), smiling and giving a friendly wave actually stops nearly all of the behavior. I'm sure each has had his or her own experience that will contradict this method, but its worked for me. Just my opinion of course - happy motoring.

Graham

This is the crux of road-rage ... when people are in their cars they possess a level of anonymity that permits them to exhibit behavior that they would never dare to do in a face to face situation. Once you've broken the barrier and become a 'real' person, rather than just a car/idiot/guy who can't drive/yuppie/porsche driver with some form of inadequacy etc, then people start to react more sanely. Eyeball contact, or when stopped, actually speaking to the person (freaks 'em right out - especially when you're able to bite your lip and stay civil), normally destroys this anonymity barrier. Mostly.

Then again, there are those idiots for whom a slow painful death would be too good... (In WA they're the ones in the '75 truck, mad at the world so that symbolically includes you - they'll run you off the road and shout abuse to your face ... in the UK, it's White Van man.)

When forced to react, and I try REALLY REALLY hard to ignore it and not to, then it's time to drive at exactly the posted speed limit. This pisses them right off and I can usually feel the frustration from behind, but hey, that's the legal limit etc.

Kaz

Usually at the highway speeds it's hard to make the eye contact as the speed differential is to great. I'm really just trying to be there and gone before they know it. In traffic situations though I do use the eye contact method and it does indeed work. Sometimes I do the friendly eye contact thing but when someone is just getting annoyed with me because of my inability to monster truck my way over the traffic ahead of me, I will simply turn towards them, (or around if they're behind me) and look at them with absolutely no gestures and no expression on my face. I will just look at them. No matter how excited or agitated they get, I maintain the eye contact and the blank look. They ALWAYS settle down then.

K