Being owned on the road

I have a little car, it’s a 2015 Volkswagen Up!

It is the best car I have ever had. Reliable, cheap to run, easy to park, useful as it has five doors.

Comes complete with sat-nav, heated seats and air-con. A zippy vehicle with modern features.
 
As nothing in this world is perfect, it does have one or two drawbacks. It isn’t the fastest vehicle, acceleration wise. It can keep up with traffic and can do the stated speed limits but getting there can take a tad longer.
 
Getting larger items in the car can be tricky and usually means dropping the back seats. Not ideal, but is also easy to do, so it gets a half point for versatility, given it’s overall size.
 
The point I’m trying to make here is that I like it and it doesn’t make feel like I have compromised on much.
 
I may be totally happy with it, but my presence on the road makes me and my little car a target for the bigger cars. The other cars bully the little VW.

It is spotted on the road and immediately looking through my rear view mirror I see the entire front grill of an Audi or BMW swaying side to side trying to get past.
 
I’m not the slowest driver in the world, I tend to drive at the speed limits and occasionally exceed them. That doesn’t seem fast enough these days and on single lane roads the bullies let me know.
 
There are even occasions when it is as if I don’t even exist. Cutting me up on roundabouts to get ahead.

When two lanes merge into one I am expected to hit my breaks to let the car on the outside lane just drop in front of me. This sort of behaviour happens even on single lane roads, where the larger vehicle realises it can’t fully overtake me so just stays in the middle of the road literally straddling the centre line refusing to drop back, so I have to oblige and let them through.
 
My dash-cam is littered with all sorts of outrageous of activity.
 
I am not the worlds best driver, far from it. I am a defensive driver and I will tend to obey the laws of the road. I was starting to think that it was me. I asked people if they thought I was a bad driver, literally goading them to criticise me to get past that level of politeness and just tell me how I drove. I got some good pointers but nothing that made me think I am the worst driver and other road users are entitled to do how they please when I’m around.
 
After some automotive soul searching I have decided our roads are filled with people, all with different agenda’s. There are apprehensive, old, new, stupid, inconsiderate, aggressive and dangerous drivers. I tend to meet the latter groups. It’s nothing personal, but the size of my car plays an important role in how I am treated.
 
I don’t have any scientific data on this, but I would like to guess that there is a correlation between the size of the vehicle and much of an inconsiderate, aggressive or dangerous driver people are.

The bigger the vehicle the cockier they are.

It is all about status and sadly this is mostly male derived.

Something happens in the brain when men step into a large vehicle. The man owns the road and everything on it. If there happens to be smaller vehicle on the road then it is the man's duty to approach that pathetic excuse for a car, pursue it and metaphorically destroy it. Usually by overtaking or showing some display of horsepower.
 
For equality, there are probably some females that also suffer from tiny penis/massive car syndrome, but my experience has shown me it is very male dominated.
 
There are some tactics drivers of smaller cars can employ to tackle the atrocities they face.

Most of them are going to be driving related and out of a duty of care I’m not going to share them. That means I fall into the dangerous driving category.
 
The simplest and safest ways to deal with being on the road are:  
 
When being overtaken by that monstrous SUV, just laugh out loud, visually.

You can guarantee as they pass you they will look at you. They want to see who they are dominating with their massive…. car. Demented laughing kind of puts them off.
 
Being tailgated? Just slow down. Tailgating usually means that massive…. car can’t get past. Slowing down really hacks them off. If you are lucky you get to see rage.
 
If you know that massive…. car is going to overtake by the shear speed they are approaching you from behind, just move closer the the verge. This takes the fun out of it for them, knowing you have made allowances for them to pass really annoys the alpha male.
 
Finally, being a smaller car means that in the event of a collision due to poor driving you may come out worse off. Don’t do anything to risk the safety of yourself and others.

People has legitimate reasons for committing road offences, it might not be lawful on the road, but the reason they are doing it could be life or death.

Fortunately it is pretty easy to spot the ego swelled driver that wants to peacock with his massive… car.