Welcome to petty lane

What to do when you have a tailgater behind you:

Foot off the gas.
Wait until the tailgater tries to overtake you.
PIT maneuver.
Keep driving safely.

Is this lady using her phone while driving, after speeding by 20MPH and thinking it's a flex? If she uses it at 20MPH I'd bet she uses it at 70 MPH too! Couldn't this have waited until she was safely off the road?

I expect this is sarcasm (can't know, because of Poe's)
But for anyone genuinely thinking this you can see the dashcam source in her glasses reflection.

I was on a 3 lane highway going interstate. Doing 80 in a 65 on the fast lane. Big rig in the middle lane. Slowly gaining and will pass the bog rig.

Then a pickup is coming up in the fast lane TOO FAST. Easily 100mph. She tailgates me. Now boxxed in with me in front and the big rig on her right. A sane person would go in the third lane and pass us since zero other cars around. But no.

She lays on her horn and starts swaying with impatience.
So I match speed with the big rig. Maintaining the box. She honks ways more and sways even more. Shaking her fist at me.

I maintain it for another 2 minutes until my wife gets concerned she'll rear end us and we end up spinning off the highway or under the big rig.

I give in and speed up past the big rig and change lanes to her wacko pass. They speed off.

Yeah it's never worth it. You never know what people will do.

Very true. Many people act irrationally behind the wheel. Only God knows how pathetic their life must be that they want to risk life and limb to get somewhere 3 minutes faster.
- It wasn't even about going faster at that point.
  I was trying to force them to slow down and go around... Instead they went apeshit.
Yeah, better to just get them the fuck away from you ASAP than to be petty. They're not worth the risk since they've already established they're shitty drivers.
Truly. I’ve been on the motorway before with a dude seemingly angry about something I did, not sure what, that he was chasing me across the motorway even if I went from lane 4 to 1 and back he was there.
Some people are insane. Best to avoid them even if you can handle yourself as some people won’t let it go and not worth the fight if you’re not immediately in danger.
- Yep I'd call the cops at that time. Not fucking around.

I'm reminded of a story somebody shared on reddit years ago.

An arborist, working with his team. One of his crew had the chainsaw kick and come back and severely main him. He's bleeding so fucking fast. They need to get him to hospital, and they can't afford to wait for the ambulance to arrive.

The woman in front won't let them past. She's going slower and slower to make a point. They're honking at her, but she lines up with another lane to box them in. That car slows down too.

The guy is fading fast.theyre using his shirt to staunch the blood, but it's not enough. After several minutes, they finally have an opening they can take. They speed past her little car, throwing the bloodsoaked shirt out the window to slap wetly on her windshield.

They meet up with emergency services - first, a cop. The woman pulls over to talk to the cop about their reckless driving. While arguing, the ambulance arrives. The injured crew member, and the storyteller, are taken to hospital.

It's too late. He dies.

....don't fuck around man. You never know. It's no worth it. Do the safe thing and make space or pull over. Safety over spite.

Where are y'all going that you gotta pretend real life is GTA? Ain't nobody need you that bad. You're late. Get over it.

Wait, so the dude honked after her because she was speeding 20 above the limit (imo justified), and she's pretending of taking the high road by slowing down 30 under the limit just to spite him for her being wrong? 🤔

Or maybe it's oddly phrased and he was going 30 over and the petty lane is justified. (Personally I'd go 40-45, just to be not too slow as to be dangerous).

Wait, so the dude honked after her because she was speeding 20 above the limit (imo justified),
How does this work exactly? It would mean the person honking was also going 20 above the limit. So they sped up so they could honk at the person for speeding?
Just seems like two assholes if you ask me.

Kevin vs Karen.

It’s good to slow down to get the traitor off your ass, but be careful: our traitor zoomed around us and cut us off out of spite. My girlfriend pointed out that behavior like that will get that worthless dumbfuck shot one day.

Sometimes i really wish i had the time to get into a fenderbender, just so that the asshole behind gets their comeuppance.

Not an actual encouragement for break checking idiots, please be safe.

70 in a 50 zone. Doesn't matter if its km/h or mph, that's just idiotic.

exactly, the engineers should never have made a road with that big of a discrepancy between safe speed and listed speed limit
- The engineers only make the designed safe speed. Government officials make the listed limit. It used to be EXTREMELY popular for government official to knock 20-25% off the design limit of the road, ironically so they can tell everyone how safe they were.
- Was gonna cite 85th percentile speed but TIL on drawbacks
- Engineers should absolutely include traffic calming features to get people to naturally slow down, but everyone should drive the limit.
  Speed kills, kinetic energy is not linear.
  Cars are tonnes of metal hurtling down the road. Thousands upon thousands die every year, and since the increased prevalence of massive US style trucks fatalities have RISEN, undoing decades of progress. (Both in the US, and elsewhere)
  People driving 20 over the limit are arseholes (or have been influenced by car centric infrastructure and culture). Change my mind.
  Speeding is never okay. Just that lots of people have convinced themselves it's no big deal.
  Edit because of downvotes: https://www.bts.gov/content/motor-vehicle-safety-data
  Y'all are really justifying some shitty behaviour. Yeah, I get it, streets are designed shittily, and feels like it's fine to speed (especially, from what I can see, in the US), but this doesn't absolve you from doing the right thing.
  Like, if it were 5 (km/h) over, I could perhaps forgive you. But downvoting me for suggesting 20 mph over is arsehole behaviour? You don't deserve a licence.
  Fuck these carbrains putting their feelings over completely savable lives.
  USA is cooked (and Australia, somewhat cooked, since people are buying ridiculously sized cars here too).
  Don't speed, you fuckwits. Better yet, take public transport if you live in a city with cilivised transportation (obviously, not your fault if it doesn't exist).
I disagree. There are two roads near me with a limit of 55 mph, and traffic on those roads regularly moves at 75-80. Driving 55 becomes dangerous when all of the other traffic is going so much faster, because nobody expects you to be that slow. You risk getting rear-ended, and if traffic is heavy, people who end up behind you now have to merge into a much faster lane of traffic to get around you.
- Why don't they confiscate driving licences and imprison all the criminals who are driving 20-25mph dangerously over the limit?
I live out in the sticks, and if I don't go 70, it will take me forever to get where I need to go. Also everyone else is going 70, so the people doing 50 are creating an unsafe situation. It's the wild west out here.

Escalates the angry driver situation.
Takes photos while driving.

Neither driver here is in the right.

I don't need to be right.
Fuck you Kevin you piece of shit.
- Who is Kevin?
going 70 in a 50
Both drivers deserve to lose their license
- Probably not. It could be in the middle of nowhere or on a road where the speed limit hasn't been evaluated and the state default is 50. There are tons of roads like that in California or even some where the limit is in the 30s but it really shouldn't be and locals are in the 60s usually.
- That's easy to agree with in isolation, but many times on the main roads near me the normal flow of traffic in the slow lane can be 20 over. Driving at or below the speed limit would create a significantly more dangerous situation than cruising along at the same speed as the nearest several cars.
  Yeah, you'd be operating in a more legal way, and the faster drivers around you should be able to safely deal with it, but that doesn't mean the risk isn't there.
- I don't think losing their license is the right approach. I don't think scolding them is the approach either. I think most people don't realize that driving is a cooperative event. And to not only accept that and also expand on it helps most road rage go away.

- This one made me bust out laughing. Such a perfect combination.
  The previous one is great too. Both new to me, at least.

Yeah, honking at me. And those flashing lights on the roof of their car are really annoying.

what the hells a ɘɔnɒlυdmɒ

This comment section is a very good case study in why better public transportation is absolutely necessary: a lot of you should not ever drive.

The only reason I accept to not let these people pass is if it forces you do something unsafe, like throwing yourself over to the next lane and slamming on the brakes to match speed with the other cars. Otherwise just give them the lane and let them be a reckless ass somewhere else away from you. Safer that way. It's not your job to enforce traffic rules.

Exactly. You have no clue why they're speeding either. Sure it could be some a-hole, but it could also be someone with a medical situation, or someone that's about to poop their pants.
When I was younger I used to stay in the lane. Now I move over if it's safe, and let them pass. Not worth the chance of accidentally upsetting a psycho.
- I agree it’s safer to let them pass, but a medical (or personal) emergency does not give you the right to endanger other people on the road by driving fast and/or recklessly. That’s why they paint priority vehicles in bright colours and put flashing lights on them - to make it safer for everyone.
  If you have a medical emergency, you call an ambulance. Yes, they will have to drive to you first, but care starts when they arrive. If the emergency isn’t big enough to get an ambulance, there’s no reason to drive fast either.

Using phone while driving... Great.

Fuck everyone who ever touches their phone while the vehicle is on. This shit is not okay, ever.

The phone is clearly mounted on the dashboard.
It's not uncommon for people to record their whole trip for social media, not just take to a picture.
This caption could have been pasted over a completely unrelated screenshot of someone else's video for all we know.
Don't touch your phone while driving, but also, don't believe everything you see on social media.
- Ikr the number of people going "hurr they do phone use" has me wondering when the fuck people lost basic cognitive skills.
- It's not uncommon for people to record their whole trip for social media, not just take to a picture.
  That's still a distraction. Even if they don't intend to upload the entire recording they are paying less attention to the road in order to pay attention to their "performance".
- On your last point... It's still damaging because it normalises it. UK has very harsh stance on this and you'd get in shit even for point 1. There should be zero tolerance on this. They're a dickhead driver regardless. Two dickheads don't make it right.
I have some great news for you. Look at what took effect yesterday in my state! Using a mobile device, including at a red light, is now a primary offense (you'll get pulled over for just that).
This just applies to PA, but it's a pretty big state with a population between Sweden and the Netherlands, so it's not nothing!
https://www.pa.gov/content/dam/copapwp-pagov/en/penndot/documents/travelinpa/safety/trafficsafetyanddrivertopics/documents/distracted-driving-laws-fact-sheet.pdf
- Doesn’t matter if it's not enforced. We have no holding phone rules in GA and I routinely see people using their phones while driving.
- I live in PA and I'm not holding my breath for this shit to ever be enforced. I'm a school bus driver and last year I had a local cop pass me when I was stopped with my red flashers on letting kids off the bus. He was driving with one hand and looking at his phone in the other - never even saw me.
tbf, going 20 in a 50 zone is probably not a terrible situation to be multitasking in. not at all like multitasking at 50 in a 50 zone
hevicle
Given the size bloat, I think heavy vehicle => hevicle is appropriate.
I'm a school bus driver and many of my coworkers use their phones (talking, texting and even doom scrolling) while driving a bus - sometimes even when they have kids aboard. And these buses have internal cameras that are always recording! I don't understand how they're not fired or at least suspended for it, but I suppose the driver shortage has something to do with it.

I just let them pass you. Not worth some lunatic you piss off even more and end up shooting you.

If it's a 2 lane per side road the best way to get them to pass you is to not break check them but just take your foot off the gas until they get frustrated enough to just go around but this contextually sounds like a single lane sitch which you are correct is dangerous.
- I'm a school bus driver and the course material (and test questions) for the CDL state this explicitly. If someone is tailgating you, you slow down. Tailgaters are gonna tailgate no matter what, and slowing down means the damage will be less if they do happen to hit you. If that makes them mad tough tittie (the course material does not use "tough tittie" but you can tell they wanted to).
  The great irony of people who tailgate school buses is that WE CAN'T EVEN FUCKING SEE YOU BACK THERE. Even in your fantasy world of the person in front of you feeling pressured and speeding up (which never ever actually happens), it can't possibly happen if they don't even know you're there.
I would fully agree that confronting a lunatic face to face is dangerous, but the chances of getting shot for driving slow is next to zero.
- https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/driver-shot-at-for-going-too-slow-eyewitness-says/804586303/
  Boom, it happened one time so it will happen every time
- Just let them go, because they are eventually gonna crash into a cop car and then you'll see the grest confrontation between fascist pig vs unhinged sov-cit in real time, great show!
- But is not zero
- people in my region have been shot at for flashing their lights at someone to tell them their lights were off. that's why i think escalating a scenario where one or both of you are wielding/controlling deadly weapons/machinery is the only way to go.
I slow down to allow them to pass me safely and easily.
This is correct. It's never worth it.

Love reading threads about driving cause everyone is very upset for no discernible reason.

Driving is dangerous, and intentionally making it more dangerous deserves anger
- The beauty of this comment is that it could be in support of either position.
- I'll do something similar to the OP. If I'm doing 29 in a 25 and you ride my ass, we will now do 24 in a 25. I like to think I've improved the safety of the local roadway. I won't negotiate with terrorists.
- anger
  Is a big reason why it's dangerous
- This is why we should move the horb somewhere and have great big spikes on the steering wheel - the danger should have never been outsourced to others.
  I get, i know it'll never take off, but the current madness of 2T shockers is indefensible to me
Driving is inherently stressful. Hell, merely being around cars is proven to negatively impact your health: https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/newsroom/editorial/are-you-noticing-the-harmful-noise
Driving seems to bring out the second-worst in people.

You know, I get it, they're probably just an asshole. Maybe they're having an emergency, though. How about just letting them get around in case there is a good reason for driving recklessly? Or maybe just in case they're nuts enough to make things violent?

I mean, the text say the guy honked for going "70 in a 50".
If you take it at face value, the person posting is the asshole and a terrible driver endangering everybody on the road.
- She's taking selfies while driving, clearly she's the better person
- The other person would have to be doing 70 as well, in order to honk at them.
- And the other guy is the bigger asshole for honking at the poster for going too slowly when she's doing 20 over.
  If you take it all at face value, that is.
- No one is in danger strictly because of 20 over. Please. Our speed limits are insane and not grounded in safety.
Going 20 is the definition of "letting them pass". Or should she have ran off the road so the tailgating ahole could continue on going 90 in a 50 zone?
- Move out of the passing lane generally is the simple and legal thing to do.
This.
Lived in Korea for awhile, and they generally seem to not have this kind of vindictiveness or self-righteousness. They're usually like, "I dunno. Either they got a reason, or it's not worth the effort for me to do something about it."
That said, social pressure is much more effective here, so the vast majority of people fall in line. See COVID

This is why I'm in favor of public transit. So many people should not be on the road. This goes for the granny under the speed limit drivers and the insane road ragers.

I've never understood why people pick on drivers under the speed limit. It's called a limit, why do we expect people to be over it?
- There are speed limits in both directions, in every jurisdiction I'm familiar with it's illegal to drive both too fast and too slow, to exceed the posted speed limit or to drive so slowly that it impedes other traffic.
- Depending where it is, a figure of speech up to a certain point of where they actual enforce it, most cops don't even go the speed limit on some roads and highways.
  They're low and out dated as fuck, and mostly just a money grab, again, depending on the street and the limit, for example excluding in front of schools and parks
- because they are assholes who think anyone going slower than them is stupid and they are very smart and the speed limit should not apply to such very smart people.
I say this to every coworker who asks why I have a car I rarely drive. It's honestly just less stressful to commute that way. Idgaf about the weirdos at the bus stop for the most part. 90% of them are high or drunk af passed out cleanly. Every once in a while I have to nudge them out of the way to sit but that's not usually an issue they just grunt and shift and they're usually too shitfaced to move in their sleep once they're out again. One is a lady who is always drunk af but awake and basically just uses the bus stop as a people watching spot and tells me neighborhood drama. There's a pair of northerners who are polite in a northerner way. There were a brother and sister who were sleeping there for a month but last I heard she found a job and I wished them luck and haven't seen them since. I've had a few really good philosophical conversations. One was a guy who had gotten his phone stolen and we chatted about the positive effects of increased mindfulness of the day to day and not being constantly observed and reachable by both your personal contacts and the faceless corporations. I got bothered by one guy but groundskeepers were hanging kinda close and the admins pass me on their way from their cars into the building I haven't seen him since so either the facility took care of it or the other inhabitants did. Sometimes I talk, sometimes I just eat my Bacon and biscuit from the cafeteria and drink some tea. I'm trying to listen my way through the Bible just to know what's in it. Right now I'm listening to the long long list of shit you're not allowed to do while living in an aggressive war tribe in tents the desert like shitting too close to camp or having sex that doesn't make more babies to keep fighting the other tribes. The cadence is weirdly chill almost seussian.
Once she gets to work she finds a sign taped to the back of the car saying "honk it's my birthday"

I do this and then wonder why the fuck the asshole honking won't just pass.

I turn it into a game to see how slow I have to go before they leave.
I have come to a full stop before, and they just kept honking. they did drive off once I got out and grabbed a crow bar from the bed of my truck and walked towards them with a smile.
I had no intention of hurting them and it was more for my own protection than anything. They clearly wanted an altercation and fled once they realized how utterly stupid they were being.
some folks just want to feel some kind of power because they feel powerless and they just need a wake-up call.
- some folks just want to feel some kind of power because they feel powerless and they just need a wake-up call.
  This is, like, the perfect summation of the human condition. Probably an awful lot of it, anyway.

When people ride my ass while I am doing (at least) the speed limit I just take my foot off the gas to gently slow down until they go around me. If its only one lane then I will go under the speed limit. Im petty too like that

It's not just petty, it's safety.
You can't influence the size of the safety margin between you and the car behind you. But you can influence the speed at which the person behind you slams into you in case of an accident, by reducing the speed that both of you drive.
- When I drive in deer country, especially at night, I will always slow up when encountering a tailgater because I might have to brake hard for an animal and don't want to hit a deer AND/OR get rear ended - going slower means they will at least hit me less hard. They can go around if they don't like my speed. Also, statistics show that drivers that stay well behind other vehicles have far fewer accidents. Finally, traffic tends to travel at the speed of the slowest drivers on the road, so they gain little on our curvy, hilly two lane roads.

Only time I've been close to road rage was when a Mercedes CL had a really bright LED strobe light installed inside it's front grill and he activating it, if somebody was in his way.

It wasn't a cop or other emergency vehicle. Just an asshole.

I was lucky to be in front of him for 15 minutes when traffic got compacted enough to prevent lane change.

For a moment I considered hitting the brakes on that particular tailgater.

Sometimes you can adjust your side mirrors to reflect such a light into the driver's eyes
- That works. Also, back when I delivered pizza I kept a rather large LED flashlight in my cupholder all the time, ostensibly for spotting mailboxes and house numbers. (This was back in the day when having a powerful LED flashlight was a big deal, not like nowadays when you can get 3 for $10 on Amazon or whatever.) Pointing it out the back window usually got the point across when asshats felt the need to sit three feet off my back bumper and shine their high beams at me.
- People keep saying this but I tried it and its really hard to do that and concentrate on driving.

I take my foot off of the gas pedal, if they don't pass me by the time I've coasted to as slow as idle will take me I assume they aren't going to and return to the speed I was going previously.

I'll slow down to exactly the speed limit (which because my speedometer is ~2MPH fast means going slightly below the limit) if someone honks at me for going too slowly. I'll also specifically not turn right until it's green if someone behind me honks to turn right on red
I'm a pretty chill driver. I don't speed, I don't aggressively lane change or push lights, but if someone thinks their horn will get me drive in a less safe manner I will happily slow them down just a little bit more. If they don't honk, I'll happily make it easy for them to pass when it is safe

All fun and games until you get someone willing to escalate 😁

A pit maneuver is easily defendable as an accident if nobody is looking.

Have you ever slipped and accidentally honked at someone?

Oh yeah. At a stop sign or traffic light, slow traffic, kinda rested my arms on the wheel and hit the horn on accident. Felt like an ass.
How is that even possible?
- Very possible st stops. I've done it once, shocking myself more than the other driver.
- Easy. I did it the just other day because I forgot that my new CRF250L is a Honda, and the position of the turn signal switch and the horn are reversed from every other bike I own, and probably not coincidentally every also other motorcycle brand on the planet. Some guy in the lane next to me got super butthurt because he thought I honked "at" him as I was completing my turn, which was quite hilarious to watch. (He was in the far left lane, I was doing a right on red from the right lane. There is no conceivable reality in which anything I was doing would be related to him, if not for the fact that he had Main Character Disorder.)

Same day different asshole.

Play some Tom Petty for ambiance while you're rolling along.

When you repost shit on Lemmy, the repostiness is amplified by 100x.

Reading the comments I thought I was on Reddit :D
Petty Lane https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-rB0pHI9fU

My spirit animal

Fragile egos behind the wheel combined with pettiness are the worst.