ONE OF THE SCARIEST THINGS on our roads, and increasingly one of the most common, is being tailgated by a following motorist. Tailgating (or travelling too close to the car in front) is one of the most dangerous on-road behaviours, for both the tailgater and the vehicle being tailgated. It happens to everyone, but often older drivers are the target because they tend to travel at the speed limit (or below) and younger drivers believe they are easier to bully.
But what you may feel is deliberate behaviour may not be. Sometimes it can be a simple case of the driver behind you not being aware that they are travelling uncomfortably close to you. More often, it is a deliberate and aggressive tactic designed to intimidate you.
Even though you are the victim, the best thing to do is to remove yourself from the situation, to defuse it with the least possible risk to yourself, your passengers and other road users. Here’s the best, and safest way to handle tailgaters:
- At all costs, remain calm. Allowing yourself to become flustered is a certain path to losing control of your emotions, and that can easily lead to losing control of your vehicle – the last thing you want to do. Focus on the situation and drive with even greater care and attention. This is not the time to be talking to passengers, on your mobile phone or fiddling with the radio.
- Is the car behind you really travelling too close? Drivers who spend most of their time in crowded urban environments tend to travel more closely to cars in front. For example, the following distance in Sydney is considerably less than in Wagga Wagga. In your opinion the car behind may be travelling closer than you’d like, but the following driver may disagree. In this case, the stress is coming from your judgement, rather than the reality of the situation.
- Trust the law. Tailgating is almost always illegal, and if somebody drives into the back of your car, they are almost always deemed to be in the wrong. Of course, you don’t want someone rear-ending you, but the driver behind will be aware that they will be at fault if they run into your car from behind, and want to avoid doing so.
- Get out of the way. The simplest thing to do if you are being tailgated is to pull over and allow the car behind you to overtake. The usual reason for tailgating is the following driver wants to travel faster than the vehicle in front, in this case, you. Once past, the tailgater will most likely continue on his or her way and leave you behind. Pull over as soon as it is safe to do so (in some places there are slow traffic pull-outs – it is not only polite to use them, in some cases it is a legal requirement.
- Pull over and don’t speed up. If you are travelling on winding roads, allow a tailgater to pass when it is safe to do so or when there are overtaking lanes. Drivers who accelerate when the road straightens or when there is an overtaking lane are guaranteed to infuriate following motorists (and it is against the law to accelerate when being overtaken).
- Stay out of the high speed lane. The tailgater just wants to get past and move along. When you judge it is safe for them to overtake, slow slightly and pull to the left. Do not drop your left side wheels off the bitumen as this will make a tailgating driver even angrier.
- Maintain a constant speed. This allows the following driver to predict when it is safe to overtake. You may be tempted to speed up and slow down to “send him a message” that you are unhappy with his behaviour. It won’t help, and may only lead to him trying to overtake you when it is not safe, putting you both in even greater danger.
- Travel at a speed of your choosing. Don’t let a tailgating driver push you into travelling faster than you are comfortable. If necessary, use your cruise control. This has the added advantage of letting you concentrate on the situation, rather than maintaining your speed.
- Consider your own driving behaviour. If there isn’t a lane you can move into and allow the following driver to overtake, there won’t be much you can do about it. However, if you are keeping pace with the vehicle beside you, perhaps you should consider slowing down and moving to the left. Your first aim is to remove yourself from a potentially dangerous situation, not make a point to a tailgating driver.
- Travel behind a truck. If you find yourself constantly the target of tailgaters in multi-lane traffic, try taking up position at a safe distance behind a truck. Following drivers will see the truck and move into another lane before they get close to you.
- It may not be them, it may be you. If a following driver is frustrated enough to flash their headlights at you, it may be a courteous request for you to move over. Responding with an offensive gesture won’t help the situation and may only serve to anger the following driver even further. Other gestures may also be misinterpreted, so it’s best to not respond at all.
- Dim your interior mirror. If the following driver becomes even more agitated, he may turn his lights onto high beam, repeatedly sound the horn, shout insults or worse. Flip your rear vision mirror to the night time position to avoid being blinded by the glare (it is illegal to use high beam in a built-up area or when it causes problems for other drivers, but there isn’t much you can do about it from your car). Once again, your first priority is to keep yourself safe and remove yourself from the situation as soon as possible.
- Calm your passengers. If you have passengers in the car, try to keep them calm. Don’t let them become a distraction.
- Don’t try to “teach the tailgater a lesson”. Resist the temptation to view the aggressive following driver as an “adversary”, an “opponent” or, worst of all, somebody who “needs to be taught a lesson”. It is not up to you to enforce the road rules, and the most likely outcome will be to escalate an already uncomfortable and potentially dangerous situation further.
- Don’t tap the brake pedal, even if only lightly, to tell the following driver that you think he or she is travelling too close. Whatever you do, don’t brake suddenly or unexpectedly in the hope that this will make the following driver fall back – it rarely works and runs the risk of causing a crash, exactly what you’re trying to avoid.
- Report it. If you have been the target of aggressive road behaviour, road rage or tailgating, make a note of the details. Record the registration number of the car when it passes you, and if possible the make, model, year and colour. Also record the pertinent details such as the location, date and time. Report the behaviour to your local police (you can do it by phone).
And here’s one final observation that may convince you to not act irrationally or stupidly.
Once when I was the target of tailgating and other aggressive and dangerous road rage behaviour by a driver, I recorded the details and reported the incident to the police. It wasn’t something I was comfortable doing, but I felt this was a driver who didn’t deserve to be on our roads. However, when I relayed the registration number and vehicle particulars to the police, they informed me the two didn’t match. This car may have been fitted with false plates, may have been stolen or involved in (or preparing to be involved in) a crime. There was no way to identify the vehicle or the driver. He had no disincentive to take even more dangerous and illegal behaviour (such as deliberately ramming or side-swiping my car) and would almost certainly not have been insured.
I was quite shaken to realise just how at risk I could have been had I escalated the situation. And because I took every possible action to remove myself from the encounter, I am able to pass on these potentially life-saving tips to you.