A cruddy driver squeezes between you and the car in front of you and then slams on the brakes because he thought the distance between the two cars was due to the car in front moving much faster than you: he wasn't assuming you were keeping an appropriate distance because he himself would never do that.
Exactly. This calls for extreme patience and a philosophical outlook...something that I pray God will give me more of.
My solution, in rush hour, is to tailgate aggressively, but be focused like a laser on both the car in front of me and the cars in front of him. The only caveat is whether or not my view of the car in front is compromised (e.g the car blocks my view because it is large). I rear ended someone in rush hour traffic back in 1977 because I looked away for a split second to change lanes - at the exact moment they hit the brakes. We were only doing about 10 mph, so it was nothing serious, but I learned from it.