Safe Speed Forums

Firstly many apologies if this has been done recently/before. I am new here so accept my humble apologies.

So tailgating. Who here has been a victim of tailgating and how did you eradicate/solve this problem?

Who also thinks the police need to be tougher with tailgating?

My personal view is that new cars should have some sort of inbuilt camera built into the reg plate or inside car (but not too obvious to be seen) so if you are ever a victim of tailgating then you press a button and it records. Then armed with evidence the police should penalise the offending driver for driving dangerously and hand out whatever punishment is suitable, I would suggest a £1,000 fine and perhaps three points due to the severity of it, and complete lack of regard for other road users.

Any suggestions, comments?

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

The link pretty much says it all. I don't get tailgated a lot, but if I am I tend to just open up the gap in front.

I don't think cameras would be wise: as with all camera enforcement, they don't tell the full story.

- What's to stop a vindictive motorist swerving into someone's path and taking a picture?
- If the camera recorded video footage to get round this, how long and how close constitutes tailgating?
- Camera would have to have a standardised magnification so that cars didn't appear to be closer than they were.
- The severity of the tailgating is a function of the speed involved. Sitting three feet from someone's bumper in stationary traffic is not quite as bad at as 70mph! So camera would have to record speed too. I don't want one of those in my car!!!!

I have a brilliant idea to reduce tailgating:
Set speed limits to a natural free-flowing speed for the road, around the 85th percentile may be a good number to go with (just guessing)
Then you wouldn't get very frustrated drivers sitting behind rigid speed limit observers who are driving 30mph below the speed that the road could safely support. As an aside the KSi's would reduce due to fewer frustration overtakes, and road rage incidents.

However the big hurdle to getting this introduced is the government would have to backtrack on over a decade of lies and spin, and the revenue from the "speeding allowances" would dry up.

NB. I've decided that they aren't speeding fines, because a motorist is no longer "stopped" from speeding. They simply have to pay the "speeding allowance" 14 days later for the privilege of driving fast.

Tailgating This takes a lot of explaining.
Education is one key area. When people are taught to drive few instructors cover this in detail with logic and sense if at all, ask any new driver to tell you exactly what the instructor covered and they will give you little more than the Idea you shouldnt drive too close but not know whats too close, or they may mention veh lengths but will have little understanding or awareness in real situations.

If you drive too close to the veh in front for prolonged periods at any speed YOU are an INFERIOR driver.
There is ZERO advantage in driving in this way, only the foolish/misguided or stupid belives otherwise.


If you understand how much distance you need to react and stop safely if necessary at any speed within your vision (every driver should )why drive so close to eliminate those advantages?

Also this activity can frustrate or anger or intimidate other road users and in some cases make them take action that could be as hazardous as the act of tailgating or worse, tailgating a family can even get you a slap from the mum or dad at the first set of lights at red .

As for avoiding it, sometimes its difficult and depends on circumstance but the best option is to very gradually create a greater dist between you and whats ahead.

As far as what constitutes tailgating, I would argue that less than the 2 sec rule is the best measure, but the obvious is always easy to spot. The cops should do more about the obvious nob heads thats for sure. There is a means of calculating relative speeds/dist/time between etc but Ive forgotten and cant be a**ed!

If you drive close to the veh ahead, by adopting this position you will spend more time on the wrong side of the road should you overtake than you would if you kept a much greater gap and used it as acceleration platform along with good judgement to overtake.(the ideas people get about race techniques tailing are pretty silly when applied to the road)

When you drive too close you become partially under the control of the driver ahead in that whatever they do, YOU have to take immediate response you are no longer under your own control, decision making and planning becomes nothing more than reaction and brake/accelerator over use.

When you drive too close you more or less guarantee involvement in THEIR accident should they have one.In heavy traffic that may be normal carriageway speeds and you tailgate someone who cannot accelerate away due to traffic ,you would then be putting that driver/passengers at risk in the event of.........

In fact Im fed up talking about this one (though I could for hrs), anyone with a moderate intel should understand the pros and cons of tailgating and those that dont and/or practice tailgating in my view should be banned from driving under a new Thicky law that needs introducing.

People who tailgate are the same kind of people who tow their pals car with flexible tow rope with 10ft between them at 40/50/60 mph but wouldnt drive that close to someone at 20mph on their own. then again maybe they would:D

Thank you all for the intelligent and very helpful input.

Certainly a - if not the - major cause of tailgating, is drivers who are driving too slowly, in the eyes of the tailgater. Even if [s]he is correct about the tailgated, the tailgater is still wrong, thus potentially endangering those around the tailgater.

Hopefully, the tailgated will take the proper corrective action - to increase the forward safety margin, if at all possible. This would require rear awareness on the part of the tailgated ...

Which leads me to my point.

While one can almost never fault a victim for being unaware, awareness surely goes a long way toward the prevention of being same.

In the case of tailgating - as well as other agressive driving behaviors which may lead to predatory driving - it is surprisingly often the case that the potential victim was unaware of his/her surroundings, just as it is disturbingly often the case that pedestrians are surprised far more often than they should be.

Both parties have a tendency to protest that someone ELSE should do something grandiose about it, but they themselves often fail to consider how their own efforts to be aware could have done something about it.

At the risk of being redundant, an ounce of prevention is usually worth a pound of cure.

For all the reasons that have existed, that do exist now, and will in the future, live, roving law enforcement patrols can only hope to minimize such behaviors with their presence and vigilance.

It goes without saying that not to tailgate others is reasonable and prudent.
To whatever extent that the civilian public at large does not see it as reasonable and prudent to drive with an awareness that minimizes the possibility of aggressive driving behaviors, a proportionate expectation of aggressive driving behavior is likely.

I do not see how either technology (and the investment to implement it), nor even live law enforcement presence (not idling on the side of the roads, but driving on the roads themselves), can hope to have as much positive effect against any and all aggressive driving, as driving with proper etiquette, decorum, and awareness by the sensible majority of road users.

Simply put, people are, to varying degrees, unwilling to acknowledge and implement what they themselves can and should do to prevent being surprised by other people's inconsiderate and potentially dangerous behaviors.

_________________
The Rules for ALL ROAD USERS:
1) No one gets hurt
2) Nothing gets hit, except to protect others; see Rule#1
3) The Laws of Physics are invincible and immutable - so-called 'laws' of men are not
4) You are always immediately and ultimately responsible for your safety first, then proximately responsible for everyone's
Do not let other road users' mistakes become yours, nor yours become others
5) The rest, including laws of the land, is thoughtful observation, prescience, etiquette, decorum, and cooperation

From time to time I find myself - for a brief period - following someone too closely.

This is almost exclusively on rural roads, and occurrs as the driver in front accelerates or brakes, and makes less progress than I would have anticipated. As soon as I realise that my expectations of how much they would speed up on leaving a corner (for example) were overly optimistic, I adjust my own acceleration to suit, but from their point of view, if they'd looked in their mirror at that point, they would have assumed I was tailgating them.

It's one thing on a DC/Mway to match your speed to the car in front, and leave an appropriate gap.

IMO It's a lot harder to match your acceleration/deceleration to the car in front on a twisty rural road.

The only time I usually find myself tailgating is if I am moving out to overtake on a motorway into a gap smaller than I would have liked. I tend to indicate early, then pull out so that I can tuck in close to the car in front, then gradually open up a 2 second safety gap again.

I do this to cause as little disruption to the car behind as possible, and just means I have to cover the brake for a while until the gap has opened up again. This failed recently on the M5 when the car behind saw my indicators and did his best to close the gap before I could pull into it. Unfortunately his Clio had far less power than he thought and he ended up inches from my back bumper beeping his horn after failing to back off again after I had complete the manouvre.

I really wish there had been a police car on the spot to re-educate him but unfortunately not. With driving like that though it won't be long before he learns the hard way why we need the 2 second rule.

Not a fan of automatic fines because they don't explain to the person what they did wrong, and cameras would need to run for a while to see whether something was an isolated incident or how that person normally drives.

Good post. On PH I somewhat less eloquently stated "They should stop blaming the results of their own inadequate driving skills on faults they perceive in others." in comment to a thread linked from a karting forum.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

It is just possible that as you put your indicators on he had decided that you were going to wait so he began to accelerate to pass and give you time to pull in behind. He could have pressed the accelerator any time between your last mirror glance before indicating to the time it took him to notice your indicators (possibly over a second) without it being a deliberate attempt to close the gap. In his eyes you sat there then after he decided to accelerate and pass you stuck your indicator on and pulled out right in front of him.

Out of interest was there a lane free to his right he could have moved into?

I have noticed a marked reluctance on the part of some drivers to move from the middle to the outside lane to allow another vehicle to pull from the left to middle.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

reminds me of some work we did here, instrumenting some vehicles to log distance to the car in front with the aim of identifying tailgating type behaviour.

using the 2 second gap as a guideline for what constitutes tailgaing we then had the debate as to how long you have to be at less than 2 seconds to constitute tailgating.
instances of being at less than 2 seconds were quite high but mostly of short duration which corresponded to cutting into a gap behind someone and dropping back (as per the quote) or being cut infront of.

Your overtake technique is a little questionable there Andy. if you are moving into a gap you yourself admit to being less than you would have liked its probably much less than safe.

When you signal your intention thats all it is, putting your indicator on gives you no right to act unless it is safe to do so and your action does not constitute a hazard or inconvenience to others. A driver travelling at a higher speed seeing your indicator should be aware of your intention but may not be in a position to act in a way that doesnt affect other traffic so you should wait for a clear oportunity. Use of brakes on MW or DC can cause all sorts of traffic probs including phantom traffic jams, your use of brakes in this instance is brought on by your error in my view. You should be able to drive without touching brakes on MW other than in an emergency or as you slow near the end of a decelleration lane, oh and of course in traffic jams caused by someone like you braking to give themselves space after an inapropriate manouvre .

Look at your M5 incident this way. You drive along lane 2 overtaking slower vehs in lane one then someone indicates and pulls out in front of you suddenly reducing your safe travelling dist to just a few feet then brakes. If that happened to you would you consider that correct behavior of the driver pulling out? I doubt it.

If a policeman had been there he may well have had cause to nick you. Stop trying to read the minds of other road users and expect them to do what you wish them to whilst taking action that in itself is wrong.There will always be circumstances that place us all momentarily too close to the veh in front, your action being one of them, but that doesnt constitute tailgating in my book providing safe adjustments are made immediately.

This afternoon out on the M2 I was steadily catching a truck at 63mph and timed my pass into the gap between a couple of cars picking up speed to 68mph to match the lead car. I had about a second in front and maybe 1.5 behind, not something you would want to sustain but safe enough for a short time if you are alert I think.

The car behind could have pulled out into the third lane if they had wanted to, I had checked it was clear as a emergency exit for myself, but they had just been following the car in front not catching so the gap was not closing in any case.

Now the odd thing is when I pulled back over to the left and backed off down to 63mph again (cruise control) the car followed me over then proceeded to slow keeping a safeish gap before finally moving back out accelerating and passing. I have the distinct feeling the driver had not really noticed me until I had pulled in front then just 'auto-locked' onto me as a car travelling at about the speed they wanted and started to follow. It was only when I slowed back down that they realised there had been a change of situation and a decision and action was required.

It was a late 90's, early 00's model Ford Fiesta, woman driver in maybe her thirties with a couple of kids onboard.

_________________
Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

if I am being tailgated, I ask myself why.

There is a nice 30mph stretch of road around here that really we could go a little faster on it, but people like to walk along the very wide pavements and cycle on the cycle lane, so I stick to the speed limit, besides Gatso's lurk further along. Some of my fellow citizens of this fine town want to travel a little faster than I do and who am I to argue? So I just put my left indicator on, slow down and let them past, it's quite empowering to take control of that particular situation.

On motorways and DC's I hardly ever get tailgated.

On flowing motorways and DC's I think the people being tailgated should get a talking to by the law. It is not their job to make people adhere to the speed limit, they should keep left like the highway code says, unless we get allowed to overtake on both sides....

What do you mean "allowed"? It's not illegal...

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Andrew.

It should either be seriously frowned upon, if not almost entirely disallowed.

Allowing overtaking on both sides would encourage those who previously were Middle Lane Hogs to hog ANY lane, which potentially means that, at any given moment, they might be hogging EVERY lane. There would then be a new name for them:
slowpokes.

All it would take is for one slowpoke per lane to set their cruising speed [manually or automatically], which of course would be set with no consideration for anyone else in mind. Next thing you know, lolly lickers are effectively impersonating police by setting defacto speed 'limits', and preventing passing altogether.

Passenger-side passing should only be permitted when the preferred method is unadvisable or impossible, and then only under a special set of circumstances.

_________________
The Rules for ALL ROAD USERS:
1) No one gets hurt
2) Nothing gets hit, except to protect others; see Rule#1
3) The Laws of Physics are invincible and immutable - so-called 'laws' of men are not
4) You are always immediately and ultimately responsible for your safety first, then proximately responsible for everyone's
Do not let other road users' mistakes become yours, nor yours become others
5) The rest, including laws of the land, is thoughtful observation, prescience, etiquette, decorum, and cooperation

But that's already illegal - inconsiderate driving.
People should still be encouraged to normally drive on the left. But if they aren't doing so, why not go past them?

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Andrew.

I assume you mean to their left and the answer is because they are not looking for you there and may pull in on you (or they may know you are there and pull in for spite).

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

If they don't look before changing lanes then there is the same danger when overtaking on their right.
Anyone who sits in the outside lane when they don't need to will already be used to people overtaking on the left, it happens fairly often.

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Andrew.