What I'm seeing here is that lots of people who are arguing for the slow driver fall into the first category of drivers that take their time and leisurely drive from a to b. The thing is, though, if the urgency is high enough, that first category of driver turns into the second who wants to get from a to b in the least amount of time possible. For example, if you have kids and your spouse needs to get to the ER, and the only way to get there is to go at or above the speed limit with the kids in the car, you would do it. And if you got behind someone who was poking along at 15% under the speed limit, you would probably get adgitated and ride their bumper, honk, flash your lights, etc. You would do what it took to get there as fast as possible.
You are lucky he was such a good guy, if it were me I would have pulled over and challenged you to a fight.
I have 6-month old baby, and I drove yesterday, on the freeway at rush hour with him in the back in his car seat, doing the speed limit when traffic allowed. What's your point?
1) That person has no way of knowing whether you have an emergency or whether you are just an agressive driver 2) Just because someone is forced to put themselves into a situation where they do have to get some place in an emergency, others don't have to put themselves in that same situation
See, that's the thing that shocked me. I wasn't tailgating in the truest sense, as I was a little ways off from the car. That's the whole reason I was shocked into starting this thread. Anyways, I'm with most of you guys: If I'm going the speed limit, and someone's tailgaiting me, I LOVE playing speed god.
This is a bit confusing. You wrote that he was going 38 in a 45 for two miles. It takes around 3 minutes and 10 seconds to travel that distance at that speed. (It takes about 2 minutes and 40 seconds to travel 2 miles at 45 MPH) You then go on to say that after 5 minutes and 2-3 miles of tailgating he turns off. After the 3 minutes and 10 seconds of going 38, did the driver speed up to 45? Did you continue to tailgate when the driver sped up or are your time, speed and distances mixed up?
Uh, there are more than just 2 catagories of drivers. It not just people who drive fast and people who drive slow. Ever hear of going with the flow of traffic? That's what most people do. But that wasn't the case here and isn't the case with 99.99999% of tailgaters, so I don't understand your point. Most people who are trying to get someone to the hospital are going to speed and tailgate out of desperation. So that makes it OK to tailgate all the time?
This is getting to the point of endless debate, so I will bow out after this post. I don't like arguing for the sake of arguing. Eddie didn't deserve to get flipped off for driving close behind someone who was going slow. There could have been a good reason that they were going slow, but by the same tolken, they didn't know why he was riding their asses and should have also shown them the benefit of the doubt. I guess we will never know. I didn't say that slow and fast were the two types. Go back and read how I grouped them and if you can rationally come up with another group, I will gladly accept it. I used to drive from League City to 290 in rush hour every day, and spent lots of time closely watching people drive, and that's what I came up with. Nope, it's not right to tailgate in all circumstances. That's a good point, although I don't think that .00001% is an accurate number. It's probably more like .01-.001% or so of agressive drivers are having an emergency. codell is right - I guess what I've learned from this is that it's hard to know what's going on in the other car (unless you can clearly see it, cell phone conversations, BSing with buddies, etc, and even then you can't hear what's going on most of the time..) and to try to accomidate people if you can't tell.
I don't know, Xero, I'm one of those "fast" drivers (I've gotten speeding tickets about once a year since I've been driving) and even I think that Eddie, if he was truly tailgating, deserved to get flipped. It's dark, it's a windy road, there isn't a ton of traffic I'm assuming...so why not drive slower to ensure that you're not going to make a mistake. Now granted, if I see someone that's been tailing me for a long time, I will either play speed god or move out of the way (if it's single lane, I go onto the shoulder...), but hey, that's just me...
In my more quick to anger days when I was in my 20's, I had just got on the 610 Loop West. There was no on in the right hand lane, and I did check before entering the freeway. Next thing I know some yahoo in a sports car is on my bumber honking and flashing his brights at me. It had been a rough day in the IT trenches, so I promptly slammed on my breaks daring him to put his pretty sports car into the back of my beat up Sunbird. After he tested his anti-lock brakes and how the drive is on the right shoulder, he didn't come with a 1/4 mile of me after that and didn't even think about passing me. Never underestimate how crazy the person your tailgating might be.
Maybe we need a poll. Who is the bigger a-hole: a) driving 5-10 miles under the speed limit for 2-3 miles b) tail gating the above-mentioned slow driver for 2-3 miles c) this does not rate on my "care" scale people these days...
A decent rail system would fix all of this....... ..........by killing all the stupid Houston drivers who crashed into it.
I used to love speeding, and profile idiot drivers who didn't know the rules. At the same time, I can consider myself a bad driver because of some road rage scrapes I've gotten myself into. Ultimately, I've learned that escalating road rage and flicking people off is counterproductive to what all drivers want to do, get from a to b. Sure, people deserve to be flicked off and sometimes the same people feel the privelege of flicking people off, but you're going to eventually meet some nutjob who just have to get the last word or prove by showing to you how ****ing ape**** angry they are. You pull over and you start arguing and if worse comes to worse, you grab something solid and start sizing him on. It's ****ing idiotic because you're wasting your time with this nutjob and whatever seconds you tried to save by speeding or whatever is wasted on this king of the highways chump. Last thing I want to do is go to court and see this jerk again... If anyone considers themselves a top 20% driver frustrated by other drivers, consider this: Some people don't realize what's going on behind them all the time. A glance at the rear view is just a glance. They're too busy keeping their eye on the road to see your telepathic gestures of frustration. They're more likely to assume you're a lunatic when you speed up and cut them off than to think how slow they're driving. That time you spend driving 8 miles below the speeding limit for 15 minutes is not going to lose you that much time. It's a fact. Going 80 miles doesn't save you 33% of the time if you had driven 60. You save much less. (long distance hourly drives is another story) It just doesn't make any sense to get pissed off at total strangers who don't drive the way you do. When you lose control of your temper, you don't have your mind on the road. That's a big time waster right there. Well I live in southern California where cutting someone off gives you a 50-50 between getting flicked off and someone putting a bullet into your car....
