Of course! America is the exceptional country. There is no need to see how other cultures exist, to see what (other) great civiliz(s)ations have built, to see how other countries address their problems. USA! USA! USA!
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I generally ignore them, other than to ensure the gap to the car in front is adequate, which is something that I try to maintain anyway.
I’m not convinced that it’s anything to do with impatience or aggression, it just seems to be a French way of driving for some reason. Even if they do pass you, 9 times out of 10 they’ll be pulling away from you at around 1km/h.
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Agreed. It takes some getting used to, but it helps to think there is nothing personal in all of this. I remember when I first came over and was looking at properties I’d hired a car, I didn’t know where I was going and I was driving carefully. So, where I could, I pulled into the side to let them pass. On more than one occasion, they pulled in behind me!!! And then hooted loudly at me as they pulled out and went past. Over the years I’ve actually learnt to drive quite rudely and make no allowances for other drivers, eg I don’t give way and flash someone coming the other way to let them know to come through - it just is confusing for French drivers.
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Not wrong but the practice was specifically outlawed about twenty years ago, one of a number of measures introduced to counter France’s exceptionality high road accident statistics. Not everyone got the memo.
If you’re concerned about someone too close behind then it’s probably better to have a slightly large gap in front of you for a) a space they can fit in if they overtake and b) so that you don’t have to brake sharply if the vehicle in front of you does and avoid getting rear-ended.
Speed and speed limits is always a contentious issue, and I can see and understand both sides of the coin. My wife was reading a Dick Francis novel first published in 1974, where he describes someone driving slowly who then accelerated when being overtaken. This is behaviour we see all the time still, and it seems to be a part of human nature, and may even be a part of unconscious programming.
What I had read somwhere was that the French were taught this practice because running into the back of a car would cause less damage when the cars were closer together. ?
And luckily enough those kind of people seem very content to keep living (and dying) in the USA.
Unfortunately, they also continue to be born there (though that’s not Bruce Springsteen’s fault)
Not dying fast enough. But the health insurance company CEOs are trying their best.
Running contrary to the absolute certainty that a safe stopping distance will result in zero damage. No?
In the US, we were taught in Driver;s Ed classes (in the 70s) that we should not follow closer than one car length (and these are gas hog barges) behind for every 10mph of speed. If you are driving at 60mph you should be 6 car lengths behind.
Long ago and far away…
Yes there is a similar thing taught in the UK - the “two second rule” - keep a distance from the car in front that takes two seconds to travel at your current speed.
At one time they even marked motorways with chevrons to help drivers assess this (keep 2 chevrons apart) - I’m not sure if they are still used in the UK.
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I’m certainly tailgated less in rural 47 than I was in London and I don’t miss being beeped at traffic lights if I’m not moving within 10mS of the lights going green.
The one worrying thing French drivers tend to do that I’ve never seen elsewhere is get way too close to the car in front before pulling out when overtaking as if they were slipstreaming a rival in an F1 race.
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We see that all the time on motorways and in fact cars coming up in the outside lane expect cars that are slipstreaming behind a lorry to pull out at the last minute.
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A related habit is dithering about whether or not to overtake at at the start of a safe point on a straight stretch of road, then finally deciding to do so when it’s no longer safe.
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The thing that annoys me most is when somebody overtakes and squeezes into the space that I’ve left between me and the slower moving vehicle holding up the traffic then doesn’t overtake it. This happened twice on a recent trip back from the north of France. In both cases I was stuck behind a lorry and on both occasions the cars that had overtaken me were still between me and the lorry 20+km later.
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This seems a uniquely French practice that I’ve never seen anywhere else (other nations have their own daft ways of driving).
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I’ve seen it everywhere. I still have nightmare about a Dutch driver who felt that he almost had to touch my rear bumper on a very frosty slippery morning. My fear was that when he did reach the point where he steered to pass me his car may have carried straight on.
You do see similar types of chevrons and markings on some major French roads.
When I learnt to drive in the UK (earlyish 90’s), my driver instructor taught me to pick out a marker on the side of the road that the car in front is level with, and say “Only a fool breaks the two second rule” and by the time you finish you shouldn’t have passed that marker yourself… Mine was the last year when the highway code was tested with half a dozen verbal questions (pretty simple ones too) in the car straight after the test. The good old days! 
Indeed! I am more ancient than you, so my motorcycle test involved a man with a clipboard watching me ride up and down the road and doing an emergency stop! And then a few questions about the HC and identifying road signs and hey presto off I went to terrify other road users! 
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Mine too. The emergency stop was quite funny, and I obviously stopped much more quickly than he expected (having been pre-primed it was going to happen) so that he had to then beckon me over afterward.
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