Originally Posted by canklecat

This. I saw the same behavior many times when my job required a lot of cross country driving.

Some states and regions seemed infested with road nannies. They'd drive 55 in the passing lane, staying abreast with other vehicles so nobody could pass. In particular I recall all of Wisconsin, and most of the Philadelphia area being like that. But that was back in the 1980s.

For awhile several years ago I noticed a fad or trend in stop and go highway traffic of drivers jerking their cars into the shoulders, left and right sides, whenever they'd brake. I couldn't figure out whether they thought it was safer than simply slowing down, not tailgating, and braking predictably; or they were trying to block the shoulders to prevent motorcycles from filtering.

One morning in rush hour traffic I was chased and nearly hit several times by a road nanny. And I hadn't even been filtering that morning. Fortunately I was able to escape down an access road, but was forced to filter to escape the enraged nanny.

Back in the mid 1970s when I bicycled to the Bethesda Navy hospital where I was stationed I'd often ride through Rock Creek Park. Back then, especially so early in the morning, there was rarely much traffic.

One morning grumpy old fellow tried to run me of the road and finally raced ahead, swerved to block the road and got out to yell at me to use the bike path. There was no bike path, just a narrow path for walkers and joggers and murderers. That's where Chandra Levy was killed years later.

I ignored the guy and rode around him.

You can't reason with people who think the best way to prove their misguided point about safety is to cause an accident and injure someone else.