How do you deal with aggressive drivers/road rage situations?

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driver_dylan@reddit

I get over it pretty quickly by thinking how my 80,000 lbs would easily tear through their Tesla and the only thing that stops it is that I don't let the intrusive thoughts win today.

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driver_dylan@reddit

No, The real secret is I actually worked a Disney World retail. My intrusive thoughts are as long dead as my soul.

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jmzstl@reddit

I ignore it, back off and get away if possible. Road ragers seem to hate it even more if you ignore them, which makes it funnier to deal with.

My trailer is a giant billboard for a Fortune 100 company, and I get paid way too much money to get pulled into raging right back at them.

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seneeb@reddit

By being governed at 65 and having my only option be let the stupid go.

It's been quite stress relieving

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I had a pickup truck swerve from behind me to the right lane before I could get back in the right lane after passing another semi, I had already had my blinker on too. They then held down their horn the whole 72 feet of me and then try to "fake" ram me and swerved into my lane to freak me out, I didn't give a shit lmao, I was holding down my air horn as soon as they did that manuver and flicked them off until they were out of sight.

I wasn't even going that slow, at least 5mph faster than the other semi. They were just mad I didn't wait for them and the mile long of cars behind them to pass the semi first and slowed them down from going 70 to 80 in a 55. Like ok buddy 🤷

This was in Flordia by the way.

After that, I got into the right lane and any car that wanted to get in front of me gave me plenty of room, had their blinky on and slowly merged lmao.

I just don't let idiots get to me. If they hit me that's on them.

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SaltAndBitter@reddit

Shit always gives me a laugh. Like "oh, no! How dare I not cut off the other big truck! How fucking evil of me! /s"

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0100100012635@reddit

Like what do you tell yourself to assure yourself that your approach/response is sound?

I really don't feel like talking to the police, filling out an accident report, waiting to be rescued, and/or pissing in a cup. I get paid by the hour so I don't mind slowing down to give them plenty of room to be a dick head.

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SaltAndBitter@reddit

This. I do enough fucking paperwork already... I don't want to add more

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kndwy@reddit

Think about this:

Have a deadline to be at an address, have a limited legal hours that you can drive and you face a troublesome driver in front of you. You have choices:

1- be calm slow down loose maybe 15 minutes, maybe 30 but still be on your way and be on time at the destination and within your legal driving time. Or,

2- show that garbage how to drive and cause an accident!!!

2a- can you live with it if it ends up someone being disabled, even worse; a death?

2b- even if there wasn’t any bodily injury you have to deal with an arrogant and delusional person while you wait for an officer to show up; now you lost precious hours and your delivery on jeopardy, your driving hours wasted more importantly that accident in your record will haunt you for years to come and it may even cost your current job!!

So, is there choices or A CHOICE here?

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Leaf-Stars@reddit

I’m getting paid to deal with bullshit on the road. Four wheelers are doing it for free.

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hackingmule@reddit

I don't think about them. I just continue on. They're not worth my time and effort.

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Safe_Fail_568@reddit

Under no circumstances engage in road rage

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last_somewhere@reddit

In the famous words from Skipper (Penguins of Madagascar). Smile and wave boys, smile and wave.

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ursisterstoy@reddit

At first I cared more. Now I just try to not fall asleep as they bore me to death with their stupidity.

And the really messed up part is that nothing they do makes sense. The fastest vehicles are cars and motorcycles. They’re going less than 20 miles on average, they’re blowing red lights to turn into the next driveway, they’re passing people on the exit ramp to stop, they’re familiar with how the rush hour traffic or some other careless driver ahead of them caused traffic to come to a screeching halt right around the corner.

And just do the math. My truck is governed at 75 but I do the speed limit. If that’s 750 miles with an average of 68.5 mph in speed limits that’s 10.9 hours and if I was to do 75 mph the whole way that’s 10 hours. Across 7 days less than 7 hours of time save. Now there are the trucks governed at 68. They do 68 when the speed limit is 40, they do 68 when the speed limit is 75. For them this is going to be like 67.8 mph if they pretended to care and 68 mph if they don’t. For 750 miles they take 11.06 hours if they pretend to care and 11.02 hours if they don’t. What’s the shift limit on drive time? Or what if they drive less than 750 miles? What if it’s 75 in a 55 mph zone for 0.2 miles? Do the speed limit and it takes 1.31 seconds or speed and it takes 0.96 seconds. For what? Risk losing a full week of pay or their license or their job and make it that much harder to slow down and save less than a half second?

Some speeding everywhere, weaving recklessly, and blowing through traffic lights feel like they are getting there way faster. They don’t realize the benefit doesn’t outweigh the risk.

How do I deal with it? I drive the way I’m supposed to, I yawn, I wait for them to not realize how dumb they were when I’m passing them when the traffic stops or when they’re parked in front of a police officer, or crashed into something and dead. Not my problem. I’m doing the speed limit and I’m still taking a very long break. Parked by 9:30 am, if I start at 4 am I’m an hour early. Show up 30 minutes faster and maybe my break goes from 9 am to 4 am. Drive 75 mph instead of 65 mph and I have 105 miles to go and that’s 1.4 hours vs 1.6 hours. That’s a difference of 12 minutes. And I’m already early. Doesn’t make any sense at all to drive like an idiot to lose a day worth of pay one ticket or my license/job on the second or third. Let them be idiots, I’ll just do my job.

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JohnOnWheels@reddit

You can't win in these situations so you just want to back down. You don't want to compete with stupid.

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musicalmadness1@reddit

I normally ignore it now cut to close infront of me and dont go ill let the airhorns go so they will go. If I move over to let people merge and they pin me in left lane when my signals on ill blow horns so they move. If someone's pacing beside my truck (riding right next to wheels and holding up a line) usually its city horn if they dont move airhorn to wake them up to the situation. Besides that I just puff my cigar blast music and chill.

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driver004@reddit

Smile and wave boys smile and wave

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Difficult-Tonight910@reddit

So I've discovered, at least as a newer driver in my auto-magical Tupperware torpedo, that calm driving, safety, and fuel mileage go hand in hand. Yes I realize that's common sense. I've been pushing for better fuel mileage cause I'm tired of getting calls from operations about it. They gave me useless tips for mileage so I had to teach myself. Now whenever I'm going down 94 through Chicago I let the idiots in cars do what they want without any thought other than to avoid them when they get close. I almost never come to a complete stop unless it's rush hour. I just go marginally slower than traffic. Since I'm going slower and hardly ever coming to a stop, I get way better mileage. The safer driving and avoiding people who may be in a foul state of mind is just a nice side effect, in my case. I've yet to encounter a pure road rager that is completely mad at me and only me in traffic.

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stevenmacarthur@reddit

I take pride in my chosen career, and part of that is being the Professional in every situation.

If you're drawing pay, check your ego at the door, as they say.

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HopefullyNotCyanide@reddit

Back off and avoid eye contact. People get more aggressive if you acknowledge their existence.

6 years driving and my only memorable incident was on i70, had an old lady pass by me, tap her brakes and cancel her cruise farther up. At the same time there's a line of 4 trucks.

Lady in car dropped speed rapidly, and I had 3 options, slam brakes and risk the load, hit the shoulder and risk debris damage or cut in the left lane.

I cut left and by the time the lady caught her speed, she was in front of my trailer tandems then sped off, and the guy i cut off likely didn't see all that.

A minute later he passes alongside me throwing the bird and giving the death stare, proceeds forward then starts forcing me off the road.

Backed off enough to prepare for a brake check but it didn't come.

I still think about the scenario and if I could have done something better, but nobody got harmed, just a bit of bruised ego.

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TruckinTuba@reddit

I've honestly learned, that's its better to do nothing at all, if theyrebeing really dangerous, maybe hit your camera button. But that's about it

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TheRealOutis@reddit

I don't react (other than moving over or braking in order to not get hit if needed), other than that pretend like they don't exist.

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MenaceMinded@reddit

I don't know what you are talking about. The minimum for all highways in my area is 40 mph including the toll road. I go 55 mph when I get on them because of my transmission

Truckers love to tail gate, instead of getting in the completely empty passing lane to pass, and the ones who do pass love to flip me off and sound their loud horn at me.

I have even had to deal with being tail gated 50 miles by a truck while traveling between cities before he was finally willing to pass despite being on a interstate with two lanes on our side while in the middle of no where. 😂

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AmazonNeoOrigin@reddit

Call the cops before it escalates. Be familiar with the mile markers.

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Tonkatte@reddit

I was on the freeway with my wife riding shotgun. Four wheeler decided to ‘merge’ a foot from my front bumper.

I took my foot off the accelerator and held it over the brake pedal, slowly got my following distance back.

Meanwhile, my wife, who’s not a driver, was yelling at me to blow my horn and flip them off.

Nope. I told her my job is to keep us safe. There’s no benefit engaging with bad drivers.

When I was young I would have handled it differently. Now I just want to avoid drama.

Before every long haul I tell myself “no accidents, no tickets, no injuries.” Doing okay.

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pingus3233@reddit

Piss and moan to myself about some stupid motherfucker doing stupid motherfucker shit for about five minutes at which point I’ve already forgotten about it and can go about my day as if nothing happened.

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meizhong@reddit

Do not engage. Take an exit or just slow down. Upload the video to yt later.

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deezkeys098@reddit

I don’t think of other people as real people at this point. The tablet gives me my load information where I’m going next and I talk to family every 6 months or so. When people give me the finger when they pass or brake check me it literally means nothing to me just another npc event I’ll keep doing what I’m doing and I know for a fact I won’t ever interact with that npc ever again

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Unfair_Analysis_3734@reddit

Depends on the day. When I’m on a good easy load and I’m chilling, I just watch them swerve around and laugh at how miserable they must be. But if I’m in a rush, or something happened at the shipper and I’m delayed, I have had some very unholy thoughts. Of course I’ve never acted out on them.

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Jondiesel78@reddit

[ Removed by Reddit ]

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Previous_Blueberry_5@reddit

My driver school instructor said “Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?” Shout out to Paul.

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TacoRedneck@reddit

Depends on what they are doing. Pulling around to get in front of me just to slow down again? I might pull off to an exit and do a load check to let them get out in front of me a bit.

Brake checking me? Just slow down a bit till they fuck off.

No situation will be made better by me getting pissed off and challenging them. Im not allowed to be an aggressive driver in such a large rig,I can only be a defensive driver.

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Ricemunchr@reddit

at the end of the day we’re held to a higher standard we’re supposed to be “professional drivers” so yeah contesting road ragers isn’t really ideal lol..

when i was over the road i just let people be dumb and i be the bigger person with a brain and just chill. back off and take it easy.

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ConfectionOk201@reddit

You must not be on the road much if you think truck drivers are the leading example of good drivers. I would say that they used to be that maybe 30 years ago but now there are so many that have been rushed through truck driving school or are foreigners that don't read or speak english well enough. Now with the increase in shipping with companies like Amazon and Walmart, there are a lot of stupid people doing dangerous things on the road. Last week alone, I saw 3 almost head-on collisions when trucks tried passing on blind curves. I just drive like everyone else on the road is going to do something stupid and half the time I'm right.

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in_my_offense@reddit (OP)

I drive around 50k miles a year, but 90% in the rural parts of western states. The vast majority of recklessness I encounter out here is not from truckers. But I did indeed just the other day watch a trucker pass around a blind curve and almost hit someone head on. Not sure what they're thinking, it's usually not a calculated risk at all. When I see things like that done by truckers, it's almost always an independent owner/operator.

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Naborsx21@reddit

i don't give a flying fuck about what anyone else does. never was bothered by what other people do. If you do get upset, then maybe driving isnt for you.

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Scotts-@reddit

I just straight up do not give a single fuck about anything that does not involve this truck getting to where I am taking it.

I see alot of dumb shit day in day out, who cares. I just sit back, listen to music or a podcast, pop a zyn in and drink a redbull.

Life is too short to waste it on an ego.

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Distinct-Event-7472@reddit

Just ignore them, avoid them, keep a good following distance most of the time I notice the reason people bitch about people cutting them off is because they already have a pretty short following distance if you drive reasonably sure you’ll run into some assholes but you’ll have a better time on the road honestly the people who speed up so someone doesn’t pass them are bigger assholes than people who cut me off or whatever

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thxby@reddit

Smile and wave

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AgapeAnus@reddit

Slow down and let them get away from you. If they're really a dumbfuck just pull off for a couple minutes and take a piss/smoke a ciggy and maybe you'll get to see them flipped over in a ditch later which has happened to me before and was incredibly funny. Time and distance are your friends on the road and the more of both you can have from idiots the better off you'll be.

Always remember the four D's. Everyone around you is a dumbass, distracted, drunk (or high) or just doesn't give a fuck about life anymore.

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Exciting-Car-3516@reddit

Be respectful and understand you’re not the only one on the road. Don’t do anything to put yourself or others In danger. The commons sense rules. Not just about driving but In life. Some people can be impatient around big trucks because they don’t understand the weight and size difference and think you can start, stop and turn like you’re in a Porsche at all times. People Don’t understand you are on a schedule and you need to keep going you cannot just pull over and talk about life to the squirrels. There is very little camaraderie and help from fellow truck drivers. I only get sad when I see that because they should know better. Other than these few reflections you just keep on trucking and that’s it.

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Mindless_Library22@reddit

That they are idiots and just laugh about it, somtimes give 4 wheelers the bird and keep it moving

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Ok_Bug_6470@reddit

Consequences.

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Gilgamesh2000000@reddit

Patience and distancing myself from reacting when things get me angry.

Look up 5 steps of decision making.

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DrillTheThirdHole@reddit

i generally pull onto the shoulder and take a minute, if they stop and choose to get out then i handle that on foot

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MedievalMatt91@reddit

First thing to keep in mind is that they might be road raging cause they have things going on in their lives and it’s just misdirected emotions.

You lose your job, wife has a miscarriage, just found out a family member has passed, had an argument. Whatever. And you get on the road and something happens that’s the proverbial straw. It happens to us all unless you’re self aware enough and have the self control to keep calm.

So just go into any situation like that assuming this person is emotionally unstable and it most likely has little to do with you personally.

Sure, some folks are bat shit insane coke heads that go around doing this shit for funsies or whatever. But most people are just emotional and it’s being directed at someone innocent. Doesn’t make it right, or ok. But it does kinda help keep your own cool and perspective on it. You wanna defuse things, not escalate. Kill them with kindness so to speak (after ensuring your own safety obviously.

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doobersthetitan@reddit

Ignore. Move on, dont look, don't engage. If need be get off the road go somewhere else or another way.

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2Z71PeaceReaper@reddit

Be the better man and don't try to get back at them. Keep your cool and let them go on with themselves. It's not worth it.