Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve seen anything on the road that was Road Rule worthy. I blame the lack of driving lately. But I saw one last month (Jesus I need to update more often). Well, was involved in one more like it. See, driving home, I was doing the speed limit. Oh dear god how could I be doing the speed limit? I don’t speed all the time folks. I can’t afford to. Anyway, a guy comes up behind me, starts tailgating me, and flashing his high beams. Not a constant stream of them, just a flash, pause for a minute, flash, and so on.
Heres the problem though. Well, there’s a couple of them actually. The first was that there was a car in front of me, and a car beside me. So where the hell am I going to go, even if I wanted to speed up? The second is that I’m doing the speed limit. That is LIMIT, not SUGGESTED. If I decide to speed up to get out of your way, then I’m liable if a cop sees me.
Tailgating itself pisses me off. You never know what the car in front of you is going to do, so why do you feel the need to be only a couple feet off it’s bumper? The two second rule is designed to give you enough time to react to whatever happens in front of you. Now, to my knowledge in Calgary at least, if you hit a car from behind, it’s your fault. Period. No extenuating circumstances, no excuses, no “But I had to be there at a certain time”, nothing. Hit from behind, it’s the person in backs fault. So that’s not what pisses me off. You hit me, it won’t be my fault.
No, what pisses me off about tailgating, is that the person that tailgates is showing a complete disregard for the rest of the people on the road. Just because your in a hurry doesn’t give you the right to chance taking out a persons vehicle. For all you know that might be their livelihood. If you get into an accident, you don’t know that the person in front of you is going to have another vehicle to get to and from their job, or if they need the vehicle for a special needs family member, never mind the fact that their insurance company just might decide to jack their rates if they do get into an accident.
The flashing of the headlights, now that was just salt in the wound for me. I flash my headlights at people. Normally to let them know if their headlights are off, or on high beams (see the previous Road Rule for that rant), but never to say get the hell out of my way. That’s what a horn is for. Unfortunately it made me do something that I swore to myself that I would never do anymore. I slammed on the brakes for a second to get him off my ass. That is an incredibly dumb thing to do. It puts you and the person behind you in danger. No, I shouldn’t have done that. But it worked. For a total of two seconds. Then they were right on my ass again.
Anywho, time to post this.
Meh.
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