Someone just brake-tested me

Strider590

mikey72 wrote: »

Don't drive on autopilot and you won't find yourself getting too close.
Then if you do have to brake, you won't be panicing about being on ice with them.
You've been advised how to drive when it's icy before, and you still seem to be doing everything wrong.

My step father has selective hearing, do you have selective reading?

maninthestreet

lostsheep wrote: »

Someone just brake tested me, and they had their kid in the back! What a ****! Obviously I can't have been that close up behind, because he had to slow excessively for a corner to let me catch up before it could actually be done.

If you weren't 'that close up behind', you had plenty of time to slow down yourself.

Doozergirl

How do you even know you're being brake tested if you're not too close? It would just look like the car in front was braking for some reason...

Strider590

Doozergirl wrote: »

How do you even know you're being brake tested if you're not too close? It would just look like the car in front was braking for some reason...

It's simple... Car in front drives to slowly round a corner, you get closer, but still within the safe stopping distance for that speed, driver has no concept of speed and sees you as being to close, driver slams on the brakes for no good reason.

If you think about it, what looks too close at motorway speeds, would look "ok" on a 30mph road. But if the driver ahead has such a low degree of situational awareness, you could seem "too close" even when your not.

pwllbwdr

Strider590 wrote: »

(though at 5mph you could be 1inch from their bumper and still keep a 2s gap)

That is wrong by quite a large margin. Is that how you judge speed and distance?

lostsheep

Maybe on a forum (a place for people with opinions) I shouldn't have expected to just register my shock at their disregard for their kid in both the braking in the first place and flipping the v after without the circumstances triggering some discussion, but it didn't occur to me for some reason. But seeing as it has, it's nice to see people on both sides, and not all just assuming I was being an !!!!. Although I do confess to prodding the horn, which is maybe a little more !!!!-like than I try to be.

In respect of my distance, it may have dropped below what he was comfortable with a couple of times, but we were going slow enough that I could stop anyway, and get a look ahead with a view to overtaking. So I wasn't an angel in this, but I wasn't being bad, either.

And then there's the decision to brake-test someone. There are two ways this can go:
1. They judged the distance more closely than you'd like but still have given themselves enough room and are paying attention so don't hit you. This may just tell them that they got it spot on for all you know.
2. You're right, they're too close to stop and/or they're not paying adequate attention. You have an accident, and this may even appeal to a single person alone in a knackered old car, but do you really want to risk that they're looking somewhere else at the time - after you've frustrated them into fixating on the road ahead to overtake and they're just starting to put their foot down, maybe - and slam into you without slowing down at all.

So I exaggerated number 2, but you can see it happening, especially to the angrier drivers. But I was just making the point that when this happens, the following driver is sometimes (maybe often) wrong, but the leading driver is always wrong. Especially when they're endangering the health of others.

lostsheep

Doozergirl wrote: »

How do you even know you're being brake tested if you're not too close? It would just look like the car in front was braking for some reason...

Ah, well. A safe distance merely covers the requirement to stop if the person in front does, and this should come with a margin to cover the time for the red lights to get your attention, and to spot they're really leaning on the anchors. But this still means you can be far enough away and still have to slam on the brakes when they do. And it looks like them braking inexplicably.

Edit: Although I'd normally hang back a bit more when I'm not trying to get by because I prefer not to use my brakes when I can get away with it - they waste fuel, and that allows for them to be involved in a crash that slows them faster than brakes alone can.

Hintza

My rule of thumb (outside 30 mph limits) is I can't see their headlights I will dab the brakes a couple of times if that doesn't work then these days I just get slower and slower.

In the days of my youth (or if they really annoy me) it would have been a brake test!

Lum

The point of leaving a safe stopping distance is so that if someone stops or slows down unexpectedly, you have time to stop or slow down yourself. In the meantime you're going to end up closer to the car than is normal until reaction time sets in and you can adjust your following distance accordingly.

Some people just don't seem to get that and interpret it as an act of aggression. The one I hate is if they have slow reactions and choose to "punish" the car behind by slowing down even more, so you've slowed down, backed off a little to a safe stopping distance and at this point they've slowed down again, and so it repeats until either the car behind realises what's going on or the car in front gives up.

Even more annoying is being behind a pair of cars like this, when the car behind is tailgating and responds to the reduced speed by getting even closer, and that cycle keeps repeating, on one occasion, on a NSL single carriageway, I followed a pair of muppets doing this and once it got to single digit speeds, I just overtook both of them at which point the lead car floored it and tailgated me until I turned off.

lostsheep

Hintza wrote: »

My rule of thumb (outside 30 mph limits) is I can't see their headlights I will dab the brakes a couple of times if that doesn't work then these days I just get slower and slower.

In the days of my youth (or if they really annoy me) it would have been a brake test!

Either your cars got really poor visisibility, or that's really quite close isn't it? Even in a 30, to be consistently that close is a little much. Unless I'm remembering wrong.... I'm going to go for a drive until I found out (or until I've got where I need to go - keeping it sensible).