The real moral of this story is to always be prepared to make an emergency stop in case the person in front of you does something ridiculous.

It looks like there's a bad assumption being made here. I'm not a slow driver and I don't drive in passing lanes unless I'm passing someone. I also constantly check mirrors, so I gtfo the way appropriate, e.g., someone is going a lot faster than I am and I have room to move over (even if I'm passing; I can always resume passing after the faster guy goes by). I also actually use signals, the operation of which seems to be a mystery to many drivers.

There are situations that have been discussed previously in this thread where people will tailgate that don't involve "pride," bad driving on the part of the person being tailed, etc. For example, someone going the speed limit in a one-lane situation might draw a tailgater; also, someone going the speed limit in the far right lane of a highway near an exit ramp might draw a tailgater.

My experience has been that the people tailgating aren't overly-aggressive steroid monkeys looking to kill someone by running into the back of them. It seems more like they're oblivious that they're following at an unsafe distance. So hitting the brakes or even taking your foot off the accelerator is enough to get them to leave some space or pass.

Lots of fun/funny stuff there, but #2 on the list is really scary. I'm surprised that the guy in the SUV didn't call 911 immediately and drive to a police station or stay on the highway until police arrived.

Absolutely.

You're right, and I totally agree with you. I drive like you described, so I don't really find myself being tailgated. From my experience though, the majority of incidents are because someone is driving too slow in the passing lane, but you're right, there are other incidents too. In those instances, I see nothing wrong with doing what you're describing, quick tap and such.

How many road rage incidents could be avoided if people just swallowed their pride though? It's not always about ego, but if people cares less about winning on the road, there would be fewer incidents.

I don't think you need to worry much about road rage in Canada...you are Canadian, right?

Some of those videos that someone posted above prove your point quite nicely. Especially the pickup & Z4 one.

Yeah, not sure how you know that exactly, but yeah.

I would say that this is not true for one reason - in Canada, people do not respect the passing lane at all. Most people don't even know it's called the passing lane, or that it should be used for passing. When I drive on main highways in the US, the difference is stark.

I often try to use driving as an exercise in patience, I've raged plenty in my youth, but after a certain age, I no longer see flying off the handle as a good character trait.

nah bro i def think OOT's response to

"help guys I'm having trouble handling my emotions in certain situations"

of

"handle ur emotions better lol"

is pretty good and not smugtarded at all.

I don't think there's a big cultural difference between the USA and Canada for driving in the passing lane. It's often more a function of the highway layout and traffic volumes.

The worst stretch I've driven regularly that had slow people in the passing lane was the freeway between NYC and AC.

LOL

I try to be very objective about driving. People who live in one state and SWEAR the people in every state around them are 600000000x worse... zz

But I used to drive from CT to Atlantic City every single week, 4.5 hours each way.

Jesus Christ, once you hit Jersey there's just not a single person willing to pass on the left.

The weirdest thing is, they'd freely pass on the right. If I'm in the right lane at 2 am with no traffic the guy behind me will tailgate indefinitely but once a third lane opens up he'll barrel past me. WTF? wtf wtf wtf. This kind of stuff happened so many times I couldn't believe it.

I remember one time I was in the right lane and some dickball was in the left lane doing 2 over. Traffic was light but whatever, gfy. A cop is barreling down the left lane and I see him like 2 miles behind me. Dude comes charging and mr dickball doesn't move over and cop gives 0 ****s and just spikes the brakes and starts tailing pretty hard; I drop my speed so I can enjoy the lulz.

This goes on for a good two minutes which for something like this is a really long time. Cop finally moves to the middle lane, blasts that spotlight right at the driver for like 20 seconds. I hear no sounds or anything, just a projector light while everyone's driving. After about 10 seconds of that cop gets back behind the guy, hits the lights, and the sirens(totally unecessary) and pulls the guy over. Easily one of the most gratifying things I've ever seen happen.

From my experience (I live in Toronto) no one respects the passing lane, not even a little. Maybe I've just been running good in the US, but all the cross country trips I've taken, mostly to Florida, every single car has respected the passing lane.

that was a pretty big deal when it happened, definitely not funny at all. he was badly beaten and one of the bikers was paralyzed after being run over when he first escaped. he had been calling 911. i'm not sure if he ever gave a statement on it but i'm sure he didn't mean to get stuck in traffic like that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexian_Lien_beating

The most upsetting things about the story, is the guy who broke the SUV's window was a cop.

Tip for getting tailgaters to back off without brake testing them.

In daylight, flick your regular lights on for a second or two. Most times they will see no difference between those and your brake lights and will back off.

At night time do the same with your rear fog lights.

I live right off I-80, which has a heavy amount of truck traffic that can slow things down a bit. Trucks will drive painfully slow in the right lane, with slightly less painfully slow people passing them in the left lane. I don't care much about slow left lane drivers within reason, but occasionally you'll get some asshat who parks himself in the left lane and drives the same speed as the truck - sometimes as much as 15-20 under. I'm not much of a tailgater, but I may or may not have blasted past a couple of these guys laying on my horn once I was able to.

My other peeve is when I'm driving at a reasonable speed in the left lane during moderate traffic, still passing the guys to the right of me, and then some knucklehead comes up and rides on my bumper for awhile before doing a crazy ninja move to pass on the right and get in front of me....only to be slowed by the other traffic in front of me. What exactly were you hoping to accomplish by passing me?

We have a lot of windy roads out here, so I also see a lot of people randomly drifting across lanes (usually while distracted by some kind of electronic device). I've had some near misses with people damn near drifting into me - then they always look at me like I shot their dog when I hit the horn.

So the wife called 911 four times? Hopefully the calls will be investigated because it seems like she should have been able to communicate the urgency of the situation and their location during four calls.

My granddad was a police driving instructor. He drummed into us the first rule of safe driving ever since we were little.

"Never drive at such a speed, that you cannot stop within the distance you can see to be clear".

So many accidents would be prevented if everyone followed this.

If some crazy duck lady parks her car on the freeway in front of me, the only way Im getting into an accident is if someone hits me from behind after I stop.

so you stay 30 car lengths back from the car in front of you? lol gramps

Not to mention he must just not ever drive in medium-heavy traffic.

Yeah, obviously in heavy traffic you modify it and add or "know will always be clear" i.e. if you can stop faster than the car in front... but as a general principle its a good starting point. The key principle of defensive driving is driving in a way that you dont crash even if other people are dickheads...

Defensive driving is great when done properly, but way too many are too incompetent to do so.... A lot of these so called "defensive drivers" enjoy slamming the breaks on at any hint of perceived trouble, not only ruining the flow of traffic in the process, but creating a greater chance of an accident actually occurring.

I always* enjoy watching the people that leave way too much room in heavy traffic as they just continually get cut off by drivers merging in front of them and then braking.

I dont care if people keep closing off my space. I enjoy driving and im happy to let people go ahead. Adding an extra 10 or 15% to my journey time really doesnt bother me.

If you take enjoyment out of other people having to slow down because of bad drivers... well...

That said, Ive havent had to drive to work for a long time... so it might be different if my sleep and/or family time depended on the length of my commute.

It's not that its slower for that person that I enjoy. It's that they're doing something that generally puts them in a less safe position while probably being smug that they're driving so defensively.