Report 2
Tailgating

Denise Tanaka tailgates because she feels that people drive too slow and by tailgating, she is forcing them to drive faster.

As for Todd Takitani ,he talks about how he retaliates against tailgaters by slamming on the breaks and waiting until the light turns yellow and then rushes through the intersection leaving the person behind him stuck at the light.

While Todd Crawford decided to drive at the speed limit one day and everyone thought that he was driving too slow. As a result, everyone tailgated him and tried to make him drive faster.

I agree with Dr. James theory that tailgating is the attempt to force your will over another driver. As for my self, I often find my self tailgating, but only when another person does it to me first! Im quite good at it too! When someone tailgates me I can't help myself I just get so mad, "Why don't they just go around?!" Thats when I get even!

My tailgating experience...

I was driving home on the freeway when all of a sudden I see these two bright lights coming up really fast and then at the last second he cuts into the next lane, barely avoiding me. I say to my self, "Ohh you fucken ass hole!!" and I immediately begin in HOT pursuit. I notice that it is a brand new truck because he still has the factory plates. So I know that he will be worried if anything happens to his car and mine is basically a beach car so I don't really care what happens. I begin to follow REALLY close, and he speeds up to about 75 MPH to try and avoid me, but at this point, I'm so mad! I can feel the adrenaline rushing through me, like when you make a hard turn on a roller coaster. It's actually kinda fun in the sense of the rush and the thrill. So anyway I still don't let up and am tight on is rear like white on bread at 75 MPH. He switches lanes, and I do too, still close as ever, he was not going to go unpunished!! He tries to lightly step on his brake pedal to scare me off and comes even closer to me, but I know that he won't run the risk of braking hard and hitting his brand new truck, so I don't back off, he tries to switch lanes two or three more times, but I'm still there! So finally he gets off at an off ramp and I am tempted to follow, but then I finally come to my senses and realize that all this is stupid and I could really be hurt or even die!!

Are there moral implications to tailgating?... Is it ethical? fair? Justifiable? Spiritually Wrong?


As I stated before, I only tailgate when people do it me first, by saying this I am in no way justifying tailgating! Don't get me wrong, doing something that endangers the life of others as well as your own is NOT justifiable in any situation. Its just a personal thing that I have to work on, namely my temper.

Regardless of all my actions, when I sit down and think about it, I know that it is wrong. Ethically we don't the right to force ourselves on other drivers just as we feel that they don't, when we get mad at them. We should be bigger persons, and just forget about it, just learn to say, "well he's an ass hole but there's nothing that I can do about it, it's his problem not mine." If we seek revenge then we are stooping to their level.

It's not worth it to put ourselves through all this stress! All it does for us is, maybe get even, but it doesn't solve anything! So what if we got the guy back, now what? No one got anything out of it, there are no winners, you don't get a prize or a trophy what did we prove? Okay maybe we taught the guy to not mess with us but its not like he's going to remember your car and next time let you pass or something. If anything, it brings down the rest of the day for us as well as the people who have to put up with us when we complain to them at work, school, and at home.
As for spirituality, it's not right for us to force someone to drive faster or to make them feel angry or frightened. Actions like this can not be good for the soul. Just think how we feel when someone does it to us; it's not a good feeling. So why put anyone else in that same situation? I mean you should feel bad for doing something like that with such negative intentions! And if you don't feel even just a little bit of remorse, you might want to take a long hard look in the mirror and re-evaluate what kind of person you really are.

On a more personal note

As for myself I am proud to say that I have overcome my weekness!! Now when people tailgate me I no longer get mad and no longer tailgate them back! When it occurs, I just let them tailgate me and it dosn't bother me. I get off on the fact that they are so mad at me and I don't even care. This probably makes them even more mad that they don't have an effect on me. But after a while they just go around me any way, so I don't understand why they didn't just do that in the first place?!
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