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Hello Everybody,
The topic of big truck tailgating has come up several times now and I thought I'd talk about it and how to deal with it. As I've said before, I HATE tailgaters in big trucks. It's unnessary, unprofessional, and dangerous. That being said, It is caused by a structural problem in the trucking industry. drivers are paid by the mile, therefore more miles means more pay. Going faster means more miles each day. Drivers who don't know there's a little more to the equation than just that will stand on the throttle and go as fast as they can without knowing they are ruining the health of the company they are driving for and taking money out of their own pocket in the end. Because the shallow end of the gene pool in this business will probably never figure all that out, we are all probably going to endure that nonsense for the forseeable future. The questiuon is how do we safely deal with it.

1. If a truck begins to tailgate you, understand what he wants. He wants to go faster. If you can move one lane to the right, do so. It's better to move out of the jackasses way and let him be someone elses problem than risk an accident with a vehicle that weighs 20 times what your car does.

2. If you are in the far right lane, give him a minute or two. Sometimes in order the get into the lane to merge or exit a truck will need to squeak into a tight space. A good driver will immediatly begin opening up a safe following distance after getting the nessesary lane. A not so good , but not all that bad driver won't stay there long. They will exit or change lanes shortly. If you pass the next exit, or maybe 2 and the jerk is still back there, understand what he wants. He wants to go FAST. Simply bump off your cruise control and begin to coast. DON'T HIT THE BRAKES! This could cause the accident we are trying to prevent. as you gradually go slower you are giving him progressively more incentive to pass and go bother someone else.

3. Every now and then you will get a REALLY annoying clod who will just stay back there and blow the horn and flash the lights and other aggressive moves. At that point safety dictates that you get out of the situation. Take an exit. Turn down a side road. Do something, ANYTHING, to get rid of this ass. If you need to get away from a large vehicle, understand the limitations of his vehicle. A tractor trailer cant take sharp corners easily. Make a hard turn down a narrow one way street or alley. Head through a very crowdwd parking lot with small isles. Drive under low hanging trees or bridges. Just get away from the menace.

4. ALWAYS call the company responsible for the truck. Best case you will have the USDOT number off the truck to identify the firm who owns it, and the unit number. Ignore the "How's my driving" sticker and phone number on the back of the truck. Those were subscription services that were a fad a few years ago. Most companies found the services to be ineffective and have long since stopped paying for the service. Reports to those services usually go nowhere. Go home. Fire up your computer. Search for the USDOT number and company name. Call their main office number and ask to speak to the safety manager to report a dangerous incident involving a near miss with their truck.

Be ready to tell the company when, where and exactly what happened. It's also of the UTMOST IMPORTANCE that you give the safety manager your actual name and a good contact phone number. That is how they seperate the crank calls from the ones that are most likely real. If someone is upset enough about an incident and confident enough to leave contact number then they are viewed as credible. If they don't leave contact info they are ignored.

A single phone call will most likely result in a verbal safety review over the phone. Not a big deal. However if a driver gets 2 or 3 of those safety calls in six months he will likely be suspended and the records contained in the engine computer in his truck will examined for repeted incidents of hard braking of the type that tailgaters must do to keep from having a rear end collision. No driver can really hide his driving habits from the computer in the truck. the records will show what's going on.

If we all make a consistant habit of reporting this kind on nonsense we will be able to reduce it eventually

Good post... I appreciate the heads up on the best way to find out the REAL trucking firm and the best way to contact them.

Your point #2 is good advice I think, but I do try to avoid this situation as much as possible by trying to watch out for the truck coming up behind me and trying to keep a hole in the next lane for him to safely pass... sure sometimes I need to speed up just a bit to give him that room, most will see the effort to make the room, and 95% of the time when I blink him back in, there's an appreciative return blinky blink.

I've put a bit of thought [and verbiage] into this topic. Thanks
for jumping in. I've called in my share, including a few for
*good* behavior just to balance things out and ask the dispatchers
"hey, can you get all the drivers to do what this one's doing?"
I haven't left a name/contact on these calls -- well, except maybe
a return email addr if they ask me to mail them the picture I'm
working the report from. They asked if I optionally wanted to
supply contact info sometimes, and I figured if I'm just part of
the general public with thousands of other motorists this driver's
professional image is up for review in front of, it didn't matter.
Maybe I'll start, as long as I can be confident that the info is
withheld from the offender[s] so, say, a fired driver doesn't
come looking to torch my house.
.
I try to do the right thing by trucks, and I've found that a
brief flick or three of the 4-ways as they're starting to
creep up does make 'em swing out sooner if they can. I hope
they see it as me trying to help 'em out. Many of these guys
are on the phone, I've noticed, so obviously their brains
aren't 100% on the task at hand.
.
_H*

Hey Hobbit. I've never heard of any company disclosing the contact info they get from people who call. They would have lawsuit exposure if they did. The outfits I worked the office for didn't even record it or write it down anywhere. Asking was just a way to see if the caller was real. That goes for good calls as well. I had a driver on my dispatch board once who had his girlfriend call in every few months with a glowing report claiming to be in some far flung state. The first problem with this plan is she picked up his paycheck for him every week. I talked to her every friday and knew her voice. The second problem with this plan was we had caller ID in the office. when she claimed to be a motorist in Ft. Collins CO with a local alabama number on the caller ID it wasn't really believeible :))

When I use my flashers, most times my car ends up rolling to a stop before the other cars pass :confused: Trucks usually do go by though.

I like hitting the washer fluid if the person is just riding my butt. I tend to not move or make sudden changes. I'll keep an eye on the person and determine where they're trying to go. Generally most people just go around.

Those are quite sensible guidelines. Thank you for putting the effort into that post!

thank you. i appreciate the tips. i learned the light blinking idea years ago when i used to take long vacations from minnesota to colorado. it was always fun to have them "wink" back to acknowledge me. i think, however, that driving in general has changed a lot since then. it's faster and there is less courtesy displayed.

i did a trip to minneapolis on I94 this weekend, and on several occasions i did use the 4 ways on for a few clicks with oncoming trucks, and then blinked them back into the right lane. most of them responded very positively. the limit on the section of road i was on is 70, with a 40 minimum. for the most part, i was driving 60.

Thanks for this thoughtful and helpful post. Can someone clarify for me what "blinking back in" means? Is it allowing a space for the truck to fit in front of you in the right lane to build and then blinking to let them know it's OK? Thanks!

High Story1267 -- blinking back in is when the driver flashes his/her headlights to let the truck driver know that (s)he has enough clearance to pull back into the lane. I typically do that shortly after I see the tailgate pass the 2' mark ahead of my bumper. That is late enough that the truck won't clip my car pulling back in and early enough that they can get over as quickly as reasonably possible. They are generally over 2s ahead of me by the time they complete their lane change so that works out well. Just watch the speeds and slow if necessary to allow everything to work out.

Thanks Sean, I'll give it a try. Wish me luck - I live in New England! :eek:

Great post. Loved everything except the idea of exiting of nothing else works. Its probably a very stupid thing on my part, but I'm not going to let someone acting badly "win". I get their front plate, note it, and if something happens, hope that the information I leave will help others pursue. Sometimes I think we have an issue with people not standing up for themselves when its right to do so. Strangly a lot of people have no problem standing up for themselves when they have no right to do so, and are making themselves a donkey.

I'm not so sure about exiting or turning. It's really difficult
to feel like one can slow to turn off safely with the monster
on the six in the first place, and I can't count the number of
times the response to my turn signal for an exit ramp is getting
even *closer* in anticipation of my getting out of the way and
then a near-clip of my back bumper because I normally make that
move in a slow, predictable fashion [but of course the aggressor
in question isn't predicting much of anything by then]. I find
that making turns, especially when trying to *find* something in
a strange town [something *nobody* ever takes into account], is
much more easily done when someone isn't chewing your butt.
.
It's that moment of even closer proximity that is sometimes the
most terrifying part, and if only people were told in drivers
ed and mainstream socially acceptable practice to wait until
another vehicle is *fully* out of the way before nailing it...
.
_H*