Motivations for tailgating?

[KeithO]

@beat90tsi

There, I fixed it for you and shortened your post, since you’re unwilling to admit that there is any reason a person might want to go faster than you, and you could attempt to be considerate and get out of the way.

You’re not breaking the law, so you must be a great citizen, and a wonderful person with whom we get to share the road.

I’m not breaking the law when I carry a gun on my hip, but I don’t think that would be a nice thing to do at Chuck-E-Cheese on a Saturday afternoon.

It’s also legal for people (including dirty old men) to stare at your wife and/or underage daughters when they’re in public.

It’s also legal for me to stand behind your car in the grocery store parking lot, blocking your exit, talking to my friend, while your engine idles and your ice-cream melts.

So maybe you should keep clinging to the law as the “only” standard for your behavior, and see where it gets you.

Should you decide you want to live to a higher standard, and try to actually get along with the people around you, you might find a lot less “assholes” out on the road.

But hey, what do I know, that’s just my $.02.

Reasonable people can agree to disagree and I understand your point here.

First, I don’t really care how fast people want to drive. However, if a driver insists on driving 90 in a 55 he’s going to have to accept that he is in the minority and won’t be going 90 for very long.

Second, in each of your examples of undesirable but perfectly legal behavior, you are missing one important feature when compared to the tailgater tailgating and expecting the lead car to speed up. In none of these examples is there a built-in expectation to have the other person increase his probability of getting a ticket/breaking the law. It’s just undesirable behavior with no expectation for others to do anything. The tailgating driver’s expectations of others is central to my position and I think it is lost if the above examples are used. I maintain that no other driver should engage in aggressive behavior against another driver that has done absolutely nothing wrong. I believe that the term is “entitlement issues” - the belief that you have right to something that in fact you don’t really have a right to.

I guess what is central to my mindset (and likely missing from many driver’s mindset) is that the highways were designed with constant speed in mind. If more drivers would actually choose a speed and stick to it, many of these tailgating opportunities simply wouldn’t happen. This is the basis of my thinking and probably why it is unintelligible to others.

I guess I view the tailgater in the same light that I view a driver engaging in a poorly executed merge - it is not a requirement to accelerate at a rate to have a conflict with the only other car on the road when merging. But it if often done with the expectation that the other driver change lanes to make the poorly executed merge easier - this driver believes that he can choose whatever speed he wants to and others are compelled to respond (problem is that “yield” sign). In these instances, I always (I can’t get a ticket for that) let the driver in by getting in the left lane but I have to scratch my head and wonder if these folk aren’t out to make things awkward on purpose. Chances are these are the same folk constantly changing their speed to find as many tailgating opportunities as possible and then believe everyone else is the problem.