It would be the answer to promote road rage. Vigilantism is not a good idea on the roads, or anywhere for that matter.

Luddy old mate, perhaps you should ask yourself just what you are doing to promote this tailgating you are always on about. Does it happen to you often, or does it annoy you so much you are still on about something that happened years ago.

I was tailgated by a dill out near Sofala in 2002, & have not been tailgated since. Why should you be?

I did have a few cars coming a bit closer than usual when I first put my restored Triumph TR8 back on the road. I realised I had not put the Triumph emblem back on the boot since painting the car, & they were trying to figure out what the car was. It stopped after I put the emblem back.

On my 25 kilometer drive to town I regularly find people driving at 80/85 Km/H on the 100Km/H main road, but they don't get tailgated , so I don't think it is a speed thing.

I do find the school taxi mums, who seem to be incapable of driving at a constant speed, fluctuating from 75 to 115 Km/H for no apparent reason, get tailgated. These ladies get tailgated by frustrated drivers desperate to get past & away from them. Interestingly, some of these have a tendency to wake up, speed up & tailgate anyone who passes them

I was surprised to find recently, a number of other drivers like me, who will go & have a coffee before leaving town, if they are likely to leave around the dreaded 3.00/3.30 PM departure time of these ladies.

I can't for a moment imagine that you would be so incapable of concentrating on the task in hand, to drive in this way, but could you be distracted by some unusual plant, & thus slow unexpectedly? Could it be your high mileage Xtrail is blowing a lot of fumes, & again people are desperate to get past you?

So why you in particular?

That’s excellent 579.

Have you ever had cause to take your hard evidence to the police?

That’s pretty amazing that they are common in Vic. I’ve never even heard a mention of it up here in north Qld.

Hazza, empowering the public to assist the police in upholding the law is not vigilantism.

Vigilantism is taking the law into one’s own hands. Totally different.

People are much more inclined to take things into their own hands if they feel that they will get nowhere in their efforts to report things to the police.

There would be FAR less road-rage if people could simply take a matter to the police, with hard evidence recorded on an in–car camera, and get their complaint properly dealt with.

Regarding tailgating; I don’t know what planet you are on if you never get subjected to it. But at least you witness it, so you know that it does happen.

Crikey, if you sit on or just over the speed limit, you WILL get someone following too closely pretty damn often.

As far as I’m concerned, tailgating does not only include whose morons who sit as close up your rear as they possibly can, it also includes whose who sit about one or two car lengths back at 60 or 80 and perhaps three car lengths at 100.

This is far too close, given that all the various authorities recommend a minimum 2 second gap in good conditions, which is about 6 car-lengths at 60, 8 at 80 and 10 at 100.

A vehicle sitting too close behind you is very irritating indeed as far as I’m concerned. And I’m certainly not alone. Tailgating and following too closely has come out as the top or the second top most annoying thing in a number of RACQ surveys about what peeves drivers off.

I witness it far more often than I get subjected to it. I see it all the time in traffic coming towards me. A line of vehicles, all of them following much closer than the recommended minimum following distance, is a very common sight. And very often one or two of them are full-on tailgating… while the front car is presumably just sitting on the speed limit, or perhaps just a little bit under.

continued

I had a classic incident just an hour ago. Sitting on 62 in a 60 zone, a vehicle came up behind me like a bat out of hell. I thought it was going to drive straight through me, so I put my hazard lights on. But the mongrel still just rode right up my rear end. I pulled over and let the fool past, then quickly pulled back out behind him and raised my high beam and left it on.

As far as I’m concerned I will not let that sort of driving go without giving a signal of discontent. However, if I had cameras that had recorded that, I would feel no need to do anything, other than simply go to the police.

Oh…….. hold on.

There is one rather vital necessity – that the police be receptive to complaints of that sort.

I have no idea of whether they would be. But I do know that they have been UTTERLY DISMAL in the highest order regarding my attempts to report rank drivers in the past, without hard evidence. So I would be very reluctant indeed to go anywhere near the police until I get an assurance that they will act on that sort of complaint…. and be decent to those who bother to make such complaints.

Just say that one has a camera to catch tailgaters and one is approaching a speed restriction such as at a Road Work site; one slows down as does the driver behind and closes the gap, as we all do in these circumstances.
Now if a picture is taken how does the driver of the photographed car prove that he was driving in a safe manner and was being law abiding and courteous?

Then there would be the court appearances, the possible appeals etc., etc.
How often would the accuracy of the cameras have to be tested and at what cost and by whom?

In 62 years of driving I have been tailgated about 5 times and all that I did was tap the stop lights and accelerate, that made the offender think.

On the open road if I'm driving for economy I keep an eye out for overtaking traffic and slow down and let them pass, if there are double lines then I speed up so that they are not impeded and slow down when i reach the broken lines.

If I'm in a hurry then I'm the one overtaking and tail gating doesn't occur.

Actually I complain about exactly the opposite behavior. Cars drive around town about 50 to 75 meters apart, rather than close to each other.

When you want to get out of a parking spot, or into a main road from a side street, you can sit for weeks, [or it feels that way]. Single cars dribble past, too close for you to safely pull out in front of them, but so far apart it takes for ever for a safe gap to appear.

I do think you are asking for trouble with aggressive behavior with other cars. It is not your place or right to try to dictate to other drivers how fast they should drive. You are likely to give yourself a heart attack fighting with headlights with other motorists. You really need to take it easy, & not let these people get to you, even if they are dills, you'll live longer that way.

In your instance today, was it a dual carriageway? If not how could you pull over, then back out? Were you driving in the center lane of a dual carriageway? Are you sure you are not trying to enforce the law on others.

There must be some reason this happens to you so often, & not to others.

A few years back I had a brilliant show jumper, who was a very bad traveler in a horse float. I had to drive very carefully, & slowly particularly around corners. My slow progress could very easily have annoyed other drivers.

I made a point of moving over & letting traffic past whenever I could safely, & never had a problem with other drivers getting too close, or becoming aggressive. Perhaps I've just been lucky, but I would have expected more impatient drivers here in the south east, than up your way.