Someone is tailgating me — what do I do?

Let them pass, and never touch the brakes to make a point. The people on the library’s page who watched the alternatives play out were unambiguous about the order of the moves, and three companion pages explain the habit of mind that makes the moves easy.

Ease off the gas, gently, until they go around. The tailgater is a problem that passes says: change lanes if you can, or ease your foot off the gas, no brakes, until they go around. Never brake-check. A tailgater has already spent their stopping distance, so your brake lights are a test they have pre-failed. One passenger there told the story a quarter-century later: the driver brake-checked the car riding their bumper, the tailgater lost control, ended up across the divide in the oncoming lanes, and took a box truck broadside; everyone lived, barely. Another driver’s brake-check earned them a pointed gun. The foot-off-the-gas version works because it is invisible and gradual, no challenge issued, until going around you becomes easier than staying angry. And they do go around; the problem is trying to leave. The harder half is internal, because a tailgater feels like an insult and letting them by feels like losing. Someone in emergency medicine there described patients defending their right of way from a trauma bed. You are not yielding a contest. You are declining one.

Drive as if everyone is about to make a mistake, you included. Drive like everyone’s about to make a mistake compresses defensive driving into two lines: be predictable yourself, and assume nobody else will be. For every car nearby, name the worst thing it could plausibly do and know your answer before it happens. Keep an escape route open. Treat turn signals the way one veteran summarised: always use them, never trust them. And the humility clause is the engine, not decoration: a driver who believes everyone else is the hazard drives resentful, and resentment tailgates.

Predictable is kinder than polite. Predictable is the kindest thing a driver can be says some of the most dangerous moments on a road are created by kind people: the driver who stops mid-stream to wave someone out of a car park, the right-of-way holder who halts at the four-way gesturing no, you first. The correction arrives from driving instructors, an injury lawyer and drivers who watched the crashes. Traffic is a shared language and rules are its grammar; a wave is one driver improvising new grammar nobody else heard about. Kindness at speed means taking your turn the moment it is yours, signalling before you brake, and making room for the driver who is signalling a merge.

A wave is not a green light. A wave is not a green light has two halves. Never wave anyone into a road you cannot fully see, and mostly do not wave at all: a pedestrian waved across by one “nice” stopped car met the car that did not stop, and was lucky to walk away with only a broken leg. And never spend anyone’s wave as if it were your own eyes: one person backed out of a driveway on a stranger’s confident motion straight into a truck the stranger had not seen. Take the wave as a kindness, return the smile, then look at every lane yourself before anything moves.

Who this is not for. None of the four pages covers a tailgater who follows you off your route or threatens you, so this line is the library’s, not the pages’: drive to somewhere public and staffed rather than home, and if you are in immediate danger call 911 in the US or 999 in the UK.