Tailgating: They Law Is Against Them, But They Still Do It Anyway

Every day that I head out with the car, I have a taxi tailgating me. No, it is not the exact same taxi - that would be creepy. It is a different taxi each time that is either exceeding speed limits, overtaking on a two-way street, suddenly stopping on the road, or suddenly starting after picking up or dropping off passengers. Of the things that they do, I can understand that they have to stop wherever their passengers ask them to be dropped off, but the other things that they do are quite likely to cause accidents. If somebody were to have an old car that they have had enough of but cannot seem to get a price for in the used car market, all that they would need to do is wait to get tailgated by a taxi while at about hundred kilometres per hour, and then slam the brakes to get the chassis totalled to get paid the value of the vehicle less depreciation because of the way the traffic laws work - it is almost always the fault of the vehicle that did the rear-ending irrespective of whether the vehicle in the front was driven by a maniac. Apart from that, no one else really wants to get involved in an accident even if they get the repairs at the expense of the owner of the vehicle that was tailgating. There are the locals and other taxi folk who would intentionally get ahead of other vehicles and slam their brakes to cause inconvenience and financial loss to others.

You know, there are actually scam artists who do what you describe of getting people to rear end them. Of course they don't worry about the car they get smashed, but they go to crying whiplash and try to get huge damages for medical bills too. It' all one big con, in most cases they don't even get hurt.

But a word in defense of cab drivers. They are on the clock. At all times. The quicker they get their fare were they are going the quicker they can get another. And yes, they do drive like maniacs, but keep in mind, they also do more driving in a month than some people do in 10 years. They have one heck of a lot of experience and are for the most part, very good drivers.

In Dubai, they are installing new radars that are capable of identifying tailgaters so they can be sent a ticket for the traffic offence. Looks like somebody finally recognized it as a problem and decided to do something about it. They are a menace because they could rear-end you and that would result in about twenty minutes of waiting for the cops to come over and issue a paper that the insurance firm needs to perform repairs, and sending the car to the workshop for repairs and having to rent another car while the repairs are done.

While I do have a lot of bad driving habits, tailgating is not one of them. It annoys the daylights out of me when someone tailgates me. I have found a good way to get them to back off most of the time, if you lightly tap your brake peddle a couple times real fast they sometimes take notice and will back off a little.(It makes your brake lights come on and wakes them up if they think you are stopping or slowing down.) But what really frosts my cake, since I don't tailgate, there is always a fair sized space between me and the car ahead of me, and inevitably some jerk will swerve in between us, making me look like I'm the one doing the tailgating.