Whatya do with attitude drivers at the lights?

[ZeroIndex]

'warm your tires' after pullling off.. that seems to work well..

[bert_is_evil]

Just let him go, you have nothing to prove as you already know you are riding a superior machine. Also if you are the first one off at the light you could get collected by a red light runner, so perhaps pretend you're going to take him on then just let him speed away - that way he wont have such an attitude toward MC's in the future.

[Matt]

As others have said, let 'em go - although a tinted visor stopped it happening to me!

Matt

[Blackbird]

I've found glaring is more intimidating when you're wearing a tinted/mirrored visor (yeah, I know it sounds daft), because the moron/driver/arsewipe can't be sure if you're a psycho or not. Doing something psycho helps the illusion....

Perfect description Ian - I love it too. Most look away. Far better than eye contact.

Geoff

[car]

It's vitally important if confrontation is inevitable to be stationary (altercations at speed are dangerous for riders...obviously) - I had a driver chase me round Auckland so I found a busy place (plenty of witnesses) and stopped there, quickly killing the engine and getting off the bike (so I'm not at a disadvantage). the guy skids to a halt and jumps out the car runs up to me looks UP into my helmet (smoked visor so he can't see my eyes) turns round without a word, jumps back into his big arsed car and drives away.

Reminds me of the time I overtook some boy racer on the way to York, who nailed it after me and then began gesticulating wildly. I left him to talk to himself, but hit red lights in town. As I sat there, I caught him in the corner of my mirror, pulling up behind me, opening the car door...

I killed the engine, kicked down the stand, stepped off the stand side as he pulled level with me, the bike between us. I looked up at him (McJim, you can imagine how this is unavoidable for me) and waited for it.

"Your brake light's out, mate!"

Bugger had gone out of his way to follow me into town, bless.

[forkoil]

Thanks for your interesting responses. Most fall in to one of
1) Go for it.
2) Back off and let them go
I guess which you adopt depends on who you are, or what mood you are in at the time. When my logical schizo is in ascendance I'll do 2), and the other when not. I reckon though for me its better to back off, and save humanity the problem of one more bad assed nutter driving with that extra little bit of anger in him that I had a hand in inducing But there will be times ....

[McJim]

Bugger had gone out of his way to follow me into town, bless.

Brilliant story - it's not all bad out there eh? How's the tour of NZ going?

[-df-]

Your biggest mistake was looking Mr Agro in the eye. The trick is to not even acknowledge his presence while you clinically give him the learn and put some space between him and you.

Spot on, I might look in my side mirrors...but thats about all the attention I'd give him...now if he tried to ram you off the road, thats another story altogether....

[Karma]

My personal favourite when being tailgated is to slow down even more... don't need to break at all, just let off the throttle and the engine breaking will slow you down nice and gently...

When they're sat 3 metres behind you doing 10kph then that's their correct stopping distance

[car]

Brilliant story - it's not all bad out there eh? How's the tour of NZ going?

No, it's not all bad. There are enough eejits around that flipping one off and making haste will just speed your meeting with the next one along the road, though. Which isn't to say that it isn't a lot more fun to flip the bird and make haste...

The tour is finished, at least for the time being. We've fetched up in Wanaka, and now I'm occupying myself with projects that might pay while I wait for that perfect telecommuting peripatetic sysadmin job to come up. It never will, of course, which is why I'll be beating feet to Wellington when funds start to run low.



The Odyssey is taking a well-earned rest in the garage of our newly-rented house.

[dawnrazor]

Hmmmmmm......side mounted paint ball gun, with pellets fille with brake fluid...bang no marks, but the next time it rains - no paint.....ah ya may as well dream, thing is you'd spend so much time aiming you'd probably crash into something.

[boomer]

Give 'em the bird and if they want to get all anxst about it have a chat.
the merc driver that tailgated me like a man posessed soon found his dented door and me waiting on the side of the road a little further up enough for him to piss off.

[Big Dave]

There are no winners, losers and it's not a contest - it's just a fuckwit in a car that you can't allow to impact you - in either sense of the word.

Exit the situation as soon as practicable and get back to enjoying life and riding.

Even if it means pulling over and letting them go - but only if you can't get out of Denver.

*555 as a backup.

[Fatjim]

How the heck do you guys get good leveraeg when kicking cars. When I was kicking this truck (I know, a waste of time) yesterady I just couldn't get much leverage. May have made some damage to a car, but probably not.

[Flyingpony]

Guess pulling out on front of an edging car was the mistake. I'd have let them go first and slip in behind. Never make eye contact or acknowledge anybody tail gating you, only makes it worse.

To buy some time, I find stretching both arms and scratching my back works quite well Oops, I forgot you were behind me as the km's quickly roll off

Still have to figure out an automatic throttle so she doesn't slow down so quickly, but hey who cares, it got their attention to back off and buys a bit more time to plan your escape route. Also, now that you're both doing at least 15km less than before, and holding her steady, it makes them think if tail gating you was such a bright idea.