The situational awareness the rear view mirror provides is important. I generally have an idea of where every single vehicle around me is and what they’re doing at every moment when I drive. I know when a vehicle is behind me, next to me, entering my blind spot and leaving it, etc. This way I can’t be surprised when any one of those vehicles does something unexpected. I’ve specifically been crashed into because the driver was not maintaining any situational awareness (they flat out said “I didn’t even know you were there! My truck never beeped at me!”)
This does admittedly get more difficult when there’s more than a handful of cars around me but with practice I learned to shift from tracking individual vehicles to tracking vague masses of vehicles around me which is almost as good, but more prone to surprises
Angling my rearview mirror up to the ceiling has helped me immensely.
People probably still tailgate me but I don’t notice anymore
The situational awareness the rear view mirror provides is important. I generally have an idea of where every single vehicle around me is and what they’re doing at every moment when I drive. I know when a vehicle is behind me, next to me, entering my blind spot and leaving it, etc. This way I can’t be surprised when any one of those vehicles does something unexpected. I’ve specifically been crashed into because the driver was not maintaining any situational awareness (they flat out said “I didn’t even know you were there! My truck never beeped at me!”)
This does admittedly get more difficult when there’s more than a handful of cars around me but with practice I learned to shift from tracking individual vehicles to tracking vague masses of vehicles around me which is almost as good, but more prone to surprises