Which is exactly how some people drive - an ex- used to make me car sick with the way she drove - rather than maintaing a constant speed, she'd speed up 'till she got too close to the car in front of her (dangerously close), then let off on the gas (or even tap the brakes) to slow down.
Annoying and led to no end of arguments "Why are you always criticizing my driving!?".
When I've encountered this, I've just taken my foot off the accelerator and let the car gradually lose speed. Eventually, the person behind loses patience and passes me angrily.
That one instance when you do need to accelerate quickly without the car car limiting you can be a matter of life or death.
If I get in a car, I expect consistent behavior based on previous performance. If the car pulls a "I'm sorry I can't let you do that Dave" and arbitrarily changes behavior when it feels like it, bad things are going to happen.
In most cases, I'd rather lose control and slip and slide around on/off a road than get flattened by a long vehicle merging into my lane because my car limited my acceleration.
I drive like that sometimes and have not annoyed people. I believe it reduces wear and tear too (less braking and gear changing). It might be because most of my driving is in light traffic in (and between) small towns in the English Midlands rather than city commuting.
The most common problem I have is when I slow down because I am unfamiliar with a road and cannot figure out what the right lane is or similar.
I hate people who do this, nd it is probably why my wife has such a reaction, it is more about me pestering her too much than her actually wanting to ride in the fast lane. Backseat driving is a bad habit of mine.
But one thing I have learned by driving 50k miles these past few years is that you never actually get there meaningfully faster. So really, everyone is better off if they just slow down and hit that cruise control.
No I’m talking about, in a sea of examples, the guy the other day tailgating me when I was going 40 in a 30, then after passing me went 60 (in a 30). Maniacs.
A few weeks ago I let one of these people pass in a rainstorm and then rolled my eyes as I watched him fishtail and almost kill himself on a cliff edge.
Why speeding up when being tailgated? I usually just lift my foot from the gas pedal. If you think I'm too slow, then fucking pass, don't try to bully me into driving faster.
This is actually how you're supposed to drive in traffic.
Give more space to the car in front of you and try to stay at a constant speed. You will see truckers do this a lot.
It also is much better for your car and mental health. You don't need to accelerate to a complete stop over and over.
I do this every time I'm in very bad traffic (Think inching along and coming to a complete stop multiple times).
However about 10% of the time I get some idiot behind me that thinks that I'm going to slow so they speed around me just to come to a complete stop 2 seconds later.
Says the same thing to people in the US (and elsewhere??) that drive in the freeway's fast lane holding everyone up for MILES. That is one of the most annoying things I face regularly on the road.
I know what they're saying and I've often found it annoying as well.
If such a car is following you and you get to the left or middle lane to overtake a slower car then the car behind you first accelerates to your right as if they were going to pass you, then brakes because of course there's another car there, the one you are overtaking.
The other case where I find them annoying, the worst case for me, is when I'm quietly driving my speed, overtaking a (slow compared to me) car that is following another one. But while I'm overtaking the "auto following" car, the car in front of it gets back to the right lane and the other car suddenly takes off much faster than me. So here I was, driving 110 and overtaking a car driving 90, while suddenly accelerates to 130... until it gets stuck again a kilometer further, and I have to overtake it again, and everything repeats.
Of course, I could do the same acceleration/braking dance and stay behind them all the time, but I care about not spending fuel for useless speed changes.
There are a lot of driver douches which will always overtake whatever is overtakeable, driving like this makes you an easy 'target' and that gets me all worked up.
There is something about driving that sends otherwise normal people in to a psychopathic rage. If you were walking and someone steps in your way, you wouldn't immediately jump to punching their head in. But same thing in a car and people will just run you over for slowing them down.
> However, in reality, the flow is constantly exposed to small perturbations: imperfections on the asphalt, tiny hiccups of the engines, half-seconds of driver inattention, and so on.
I could see this — random imperfections and subtle movements of drivers causing someone to back off or brake. (I've definitely noticed other drivers being fearful of other drivers solely through their positioning on the road.) Engine hiccups sounds a bit fishy; does that happen to people? That said, I've also witnessed drivers with several hundred meters of open road in front of them — sometimes road as far as the eye can see — inexplicably brake. I've always wanted to ask them why.
> Those who drive preventively can dissipate jamitons, and benefit all of the drivers behind them.
I think it mostly boils down to listening to your driver's ed teacher, if you had one. Leave following distance. Other drivers tend to make this exceedingly hard, but if you can keep enough, you can keep your velocity relatively stable (and hopefully everyone behind you's velocity, too!) even when the car in front of you is doing a lot of braking and accelerating. I do it just so I don't have to move my foot so darn much in a traffic jam.
Likewise, if you pay attention to how much following distance exists in front of the car in front of you, you can predict fairly well when that driver will need to brake and how hard. If they're tailgating, you'll need a larger following distance yourself if you don't want to tap the brake when they brake. I also use this when traffic looks like it's speeding up again, and I might want to close the gap in front of me a bit — I take into account how much of a gap is in front of the guy in front of me, to see how likely he is to brake while I try to catch up to him.
I had someone do this me between stop signs and then he had to slam on his brakes since he barely had time to get around me. I then proceeded to follow him for the next few blocks because a car isn't that much faster than a bike in these situations.
People in cars hate being slowed down. Some, I hear, even get violent. There is a patience I learned moving through my city at 15 mph. I wish more people appreciated it.
1. By accelerating dramatically off the line, you're telling the other cars that they are driving too slowly.
2. Alternatively: you may be sending a signal that you want to drag-race with someone. And nobody likes it when drag-racers start playing on public roads. Keep that stuff off the streets and on the track only.
Now sure, if the cars next to me are driving slowly, I'll leave them in the dust. But its not something I'll do on every green-light, and its something I'd do only if they're going exceptionally slowly (ex: driving 40mph in a 60mph zone)
Those are the two signals I perceive whenever someone accelerates strongly off of a green light: either #1, or #2, depending on context. There's certainly a time to signal #1, but its a relatively rare event.
Yeah I've had that a couple times. Once was a honk (I can only assume was) because I wasn't tailgating--yet we were moving at the same speed, so the driver swerved from behind me to the side and then in front--then slammed on their brakes.
The other time was after cruising during a lot of short stop and go intervals (so it was easy to judge crawling speed, that is to say). I eventually switched to the lane I needed and the guy who was rubberbanding behind me the entire way (pretty much going 1-10-1mph constantly instead of just sitting at 3 like me) pulled next to me and shook his head. I had a good feeling why, so I rolled down my window as we came to a stop next to each other at a light and asked if there was a problem. He said, "You drive like a dumb ass". "Oh, I do? Please tell me what I was doing wrong so I can improve". "You just drive like a dumbass". "No really, you seem like you know a lot about driving, please enlighten me". And he rolled up his window, the light turned green but he accelerated before the car in front of him had a chance to go (perhaps to get away from me, I'm 6'2" and 250lbs.), and then slammed on his brakes again...
Lol, my wife has an aunt that's famous for this. She'll go whatever speed she wants in whatever lane she wants on a major 4-6 lane hwy (401 in Toronto) and will righteously swerve her finger at people flashing their lights and honking behind her: "you can GO AROUND!".
(For record and clarification I do not condone that approach :)
"There is no excuse for driving faster than you can react to the car in front of you coming to a full stop. None at all."
Not offering this up as an excuse but rather sort of a pattern of behavior.
When I leave lots of room between me and the car in front of me, it invites crazy behavior for people cutting into that big open space. Especially with people that don't know how to merge onto a freeway.
It's sometimes hard to tell if following technically too close is actually safer for that reason.
Note that I've never rear-ended anybody, but I've certainly had some exciting panic stops.
Annoying and led to no end of arguments "Why are you always criticizing my driving!?".
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