Tailgate Negative Feedback Manoeuvre

This is a manoeuvre that can be performed while driving an automobile. In general terms, it increases personal road safety at the expense of road sanity.

The manoeuvre is used when being tailgated. Simply slow down gradually and keep slowing down until you are both travelling at a speed such that there is a safe stopping distance between your car and the car behind.

Usually this results in the driver behind getting annoyed and attempting to overtake. Of course, once they are out from behind you, you are free to return to the speed limit, causing many LOLs.

The feedback part of this comes when the car behind does not overtake. They will drive ever closer, causing you to slow down further, which causes them to drive closer and so on, until you are barely moving. It is important here to reward the driver behind if they understand the message you're sending; if they remain at a safe distance, then quickly return to full speed and see what they do.

Repeat as necessary. This idea is summed up neatly in the bumper sticker which reads THE CLOSER YOU GET, THE SLOWER I GO.

Side effects

The decrease in road sanity will decrease road safety a little bit for many other drivers. In this sense, the Tailgate Negative Feedback Manoeuvre is a way of offloading high levels of personal danger to the surrounding traffic.

Whether the danger remains at sufficient density to cause trouble will depend on the exact road and traffic situation. Circumstances may allow danger to be diffused to the extent that it is effectively gone, with every location possessing a little danger, but far too little to result in injury. If other conditions are met, danger waves may reflect and resonate along a column of traffic, or between lanes, leading to nasty peaks of danger and many severed limbs.