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The story
Videos of aggressive tailgating sometimes draw comments defending the driver with lines like “the person being tailgated is partly to blame too.” In a thread on 5ch’s “Whatever Live G” board, participants clashed over why such defenses keep cropping up, in a discussion that tangled together criticism of the aggressive driving itself with gripes about slow drivers and sudden lane changes.
(。´･ω･)?
Source: youtube.com / Original article here
What people said
Is this seriously how nanG posters think?
They just want attention — same as the guys posting inflammatory replies. Anyone taking the contrarian stance for zero payoff is just lonely.
In the end it's just a binary — the other guy's either at fault or not — so it's not even that deep a take.
That's some serious approval-seeking.
You're tailgating too, you know.
What's the significance of a kei car with a white plate?
I think they mean a regional custom plate, not a white-plate registration.
Just pass them cleanly on the left. Obviously that's technically not allowed, but it beats stewing in endless stress or tailgating them.
Getting worked up over a slowpoke like that is a waste of energy — just blow past them already.
Those types swerve into the left lane the instant you try to pass on the left.
And there's the opening bell lol
I'm not wasting my time on idiots who can't tell driving apart from everything else.
Thanks for the reply.
Yeah, fair enough.
Not at fault, not responsible — but there's often still a cause.
It'd be more accurate to call it a 'trigger for tailgating' than a 'cause of being tailgated.'
Are you really in that much of a hurry? I just don't get that mindset.
No way that'd happen.
Guys who naturally assume 'I'm the exception' like this one are usually the ones doing the tailgating.
Don't give me some childish excuse like that.
Tailgated: 'There was an ambulance coming through, though.'
Tailgater: 'Shut up, just ignore it!'
The logic is completely incomprehensible.
Reality:
😡 'Move it already!'
🤤 '…(can't hear him)'
😡 'At least pull over to the side!'
🤤 '…'
There really are cars that get caught going absolutely insane speeds all the time.
Background and Key Points
Videos of aggressive tailgating on Japanese roads circulate widely on YouTube, and the comment sections that form around them are a recognizable genre in themselves — a recurring chorus insisting the tailgated driver “had it coming” for going too slow, hogging the passing lane, or braking suddenly. This matters in a specifically Japanese context because Japan’s highways operate on a strict passing-lane-only norm (the right lane, or the outer lane on multi-lane roads, is meant for overtaking, not cruising), and tailgating (aおり運転, “aori unten”) became a formally criminalized offense in 2020 after a spate of high-profile viral incidents, including a fatal case that made national news. Dashcams are near-universal in Japan precisely because of this culture of documenting road disputes, which is why so much footage exists to argue over in the first place.
The thread’s actual fault line isn’t “is tailgating okay” — virtually everyone agrees it isn’t — but whether a slow or obstructive driver can be a legitimate “trigger” for someone else’s illegal response without thereby sharing moral responsibility. Posts like #46 and #90 tried to draw a line between “cause” and “fault,” while others (#22, #30) slid between describing why tailgating happens and excusing it, which is exactly the conflation the thread title is mocking.
What outside readers likely miss is that this argument has real legal stakes in Japan, not just an internet-manners one: since the 2020 law, tailgating carries license revocation and potential criminal penalties regardless of the other driver’s conduct, meaning “the victim was slow” has zero standing as a legal defense even though it dominates the comments as a moral one.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Whatever Live G) thread “[Seven Mysteries] Who Are These Weirdos Who Keep Defending Tailgating Videos With “The Victim Was Bad Too”?”.
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