Re: Today's pucker factor moment


brink wrote:
"morticide" <grvan@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1155672054.322372.87070@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Bill Funk wrote:
On 15 Aug 2006 06:38:15 -0700, "morticide" <grvan@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Brought to you from the same area of the Darwin failure in MO (pass on
a hill) last week. Same stretch of road (MO 6, mostly no-passing
zones).

This time I was doing 65 in a 55 for 14 miles. Had a semi on my
tailgate the whole time. The road is rough at 55 let alone 65.
Thought for sure I'd end up being his hood ornament, as he was close
enough to allow for counting the bugs in his grille. Later on the
drive I got behind a pickup doing 57. I slowed; so did the trucker.
Oncoming traffic prohibited a pass; good thing, because one of the
oncoming motorists was from the sheriff's department. Had a patrolman
been on the stretch mentioned, I'm sure BOTH of us would have been
ticketed.

Letting a tailgater intimidate you into doing a speed that you feel is
unsafe is stupid.
If you'd slowed down to a more reasonable speed, he wouldn't have hit
you, and he'd have had more of a chance of not hitting you if you'd
had to slow down quickly.
What makes you think going faster in that situation will make things
better?
--
Bill Funk
replace "g" with "a"

In this particular case, 55 would have been stupid, 65 (as I was going)
would have been stupid (and was), 45 would have been quite stupid, and
75 would have been extremely stupid. The way MoDOT has left that
stretch of road in that condition (no shoulders and rough) is stupid.
The action of that trucker was stupid. In this area, based on years of
observations, nearly ALL drivers are stupid. The fact that some
posters say I was STILL a sloth at 10 over and some say I was going
crazy at that same speed reflects the universal stupidity of American
drivers...which is still not as insane as the drivers in Saudi Arabia
and Kuwait.

I still say the best repellent for tailgaters is to gradually slow -- no
braking, just take your foot off the gas -- and then accellerate again to
where you were. This works *especially* well with trucks, which take
forever to get back up to speed. It also gives them a chance to pass you if
you're slowing to 45 or even 40 before accellerating back up to 65.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Also, if a trucker is really tailgating you like that, I would not at all
hesitate to call the cops. You and the truck tailgating would be easy to
spot and Highway Patrol or whomever patrols those roads in MO would probably
take an interest in checking out your assertion that there is a trucker
driving in an agressive, threatening manner.

brink

I'd think tapping the brake - without slowdown - would be of lower risk
than letting off the gas. However, uphill slopes tend to give a
temporary break from the tailgating risk.

I thought about the call to the HP...but then the "crime" of cell phone
use while driving becomes an issue.

The end-of-the-situation (when slowed to 57) in which the trucker quit
tailgating happened to be on a newer stretch of the highway that has
wide shoulders allowing for proper partol enforcement.

Thanks for the tip anyway.

.

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    ... Bill Funk wrote: ... Same stretch of road (MO 6, ... In this particular case, 55 would have been stupid, 65 ... nearly ALL drivers are stupid. ...
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