while you are driving normally you should be assessing the situation behind you and making sure you're not being tail-gated.
If you are being tail-gated, there's not much you can do about it. You speed up; they speed up. You slow down; they honk and go around and then the car behind them tail-gates you.
One of my biggest worries about my commute (when I drive instead of taking the train, typically once a week) is that there is no way to keep enough space in front of me that I can react to full braking. If I leave that much space between me and the car in front of me, another car will move into the "open" spot. Automatic braking might well help considerably.
The thing that boggles my mind about the tailgating is how much of it is done for essentially no reason. There aren't that many defensible reasons to tailgate to start with, but the amount of purely idiotic behavior blows my mind (I regularly see people refuse to switch lanes while tightly tailgating whatever car happens to be in front of them, all this in heavy traffic).
Perhaps the most exciting thing about self driving cars is that they will all have and use the ability to think ahead more than 5 feet.
Or you can slightly tap the brake to the point when lights come on but very minor or no actual braking occurs, no need to mess with wires.
That's called brake check, you might do it a few times to show your agitation to the driver tailgating you.
If you are being tail-gated, there's not much you can do about it. You speed up; they speed up. You slow down; they honk and go around and then the car behind them tail-gates you.
One of my biggest worries about my commute (when I drive instead of taking the train, typically once a week) is that there is no way to keep enough space in front of me that I can react to full braking. If I leave that much space between me and the car in front of me, another car will move into the "open" spot. Automatic braking might well help considerably.