The best way to deal with tailgaters is to:
- Speed up to increase the distance between you and the tailgater.
- Slam on your brakes to get the other driver to back off.
- Change lanes or gradually slow down to encourage them to pass. ✓
- Ignore them.
Answer: C. Change lanes or gradually slow down to encourage them to pass.
Change lanes or gradually slow down to encourage the tailgater to pass.
Why this is the answer
The handbook lists following too closely as a form of aggressive driving, and when someone is driving dangerously around you it says to stay calm and put distance between you and that driver: slow down and let them pass. Changing lanes or easing off the gas does exactly that, opening a gap and giving the tailgater room to go around you instead of staying glued to your bumper.
Why the other answers are wrong
- A. Speed up to increase the distance between you and the tailgater. — Speeding up goes against the handbook's advice to slow down and let the dangerous driver pass, and sudden acceleration is itself listed as aggressive driving behavior.
- B. Slam on your brakes to get the other driver to back off. — Slamming on the brakes is a sudden braking move the handbook groups with aggressive driving, and it removes the space you are supposed to create.
- D. Ignore them. — Doing nothing leaves the dangerous driver right behind you, while the handbook tells you to take action and put as much distance between you as you can.
Remember it
Ease off the gas instead of racing the bumper behind you, and give the impatient driver a lane to get past.