Everyone wants to stop tailgaters, but hitting your brakes suddenly can cause road rage or an accident. To address this, I made a three-line magnetic bumper sticker at buildasign.com as follows:
- Please Don’t Tailgate
- These Brakes Stop on a Dime :-)
- Thank You!
I used yellow letters on a black background, with ALL CAPS for all of the text, but smaller all caps for the second line. I think the combination — all caps, but a smiley face and thank you — keeps the message firm but friendly and so far seems to have worked pretty well.
(If a magnetic bumper sticker won’t stick to your car, you can make a vinyl decal, such as stickersbanners.com.)
A related idea: Anytime I see traffic slowing or stopping up ahead, I check the cars behind me. If any are either very close or coming up very fast, I will blink my hazard lights a couple of time as a warning that they may need to slow down soon.
By making a habit of this over several weeks/months, it has become second nature, and so in a few urgent situations, I have automatically turned on my hazard lights when braking, which has prevented what otherwise could have been bad accidents. (The thinking here is that people will see and respond faster to suddenly flashing hazards versus just the appearance of brake lights, both during the day and at night.)
Recently, however, I got a new car, and its hazards light button was flush with the dash and positioned in such a way that it was hard to find unless I was looking directly at it, both of which took my attention away from the road if I wanted to push it. To solve this problem, I ordered some small (3/4″) adhesive plastic pads (“bumper pads”), and stuck one to the hazard lights button. Now I can reach down and find the button by feel , which lets me push it without looking.
[The specific ones I got were Shepherd Hardware 9565 3/4-Inch SurfaceGard Transparent Adhesive Bumper Pads.]
One Idea 