Road Rage

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My story isn’t so much road rage, but road stupidity.

Background:  We are going on a caravan holiday.  We have a station wagon and caravan, which in total is around the 10metre long mark.... We take a bit of space to do anything.... The gas station is crowded with people.  There are queues in front of us, behind us, everywhere!

DH and I were pulled up at a petrol/gas station to fill up our car.  It’s a Sunday afternoon, and it’s pretty busy, but it’s a large petrol station and we are confident that we have enough space to get in and out.  We are in a line, there is an petrol pump in front on the one we use.  The car in front leaves, while we are filling up, so another small car nips in to the space.  DH rushes into pay for the fuel, trying to get in and out before the car in front moves away... He gets back into the car, and is narrowly missed by a car that nips in front of us to fill up.  I lean out of the window and ask, very politely for the guy to move his car because we can’t get out.  His GF is driving, and she moves the car forward – still not enough room for us to get out.  I say to him that we still can’t get out. GF moves the car forward again.  He says to me “that’s it, you’ll have to go around us, we’re not moving any further”.  Now this would have been fine if we were riding a motorcycle, but we needed to swing out to get around the pump.  I said to him “Look, mate, I’m sorry, but we need more space, we are towing a caravan here”.  At this point he went to the car, GF hops out and he hops in.... I don’t know why he couldn’t see our caravan.. It’s big and obvious and he did have to drive past it to get to the pump!

I am not entirely sure which planet he was on, or which planet he came from.  He was from a major city, so perhaps he hadn’t quite grasped the concept that the larger the vehicle the more space it needs.

RoadRage0106-04

I was driving across San Francisco from Union Square to Haight Asbury, a little past dusk. The street (Oak, I think) was one way, five lanes across, with parking on either side.

I was in the far left lane and had come to an intersection where I had a green light. Unfortunately, across the intersection, was a car trying to parallel park. My options were to stay where I was, at the cross walk, or pull into the intersection and stop there. Because of heavy traffic, I could not pass. I stayed where I was.

A car pulled up behind me, and because of heavy traffic, he couldn't pass, either. So he did the next best thing. Lay on the horn. Not honk, but lay. So I flipped him off - I know, not smart. Apparently, that made him mad(der), since he began laying on the horn with one hand and flipping his lights with the other. It made me so mad I was going to put my car in park and go give him a piece of my mind, but I was so mad that when I tried to slam my car into park, I only got to reverse.

Silence.

Then I got the idea - Ram him! "I don't know why the mean man hit me officer. This is a rental car that my company gets me. I'm here on business."

I didn't, but he didn't know when I might take my foot off the brake, and stayed behind me, quiet, until we could both move on.

RoadRage0103-04

I have a story for you about Road Rage.  Last year my daughters and I were driving on a 2 lane highway.  Traffic was at a crawl because of an accident about a mile ahead.  We were in the right hand lane and the car in front of us wanted to go into the left lane.  He started inching over slowly. An SUV with 3 girls in it absolutely refused to let him get in front of them but he was able to get in right behind them.  The girls were not happy that he tried to get in and were screaming things at him and giggling at each other while they were doing it.  We were right next to the girls at this point.   After a few minutes of the girls acting like total witches, the girl in the front passenger seat got out of the SUV, walked to the driver's side of the car behind them acting like she wanted to talk to him.   As he rolled his window down the girl spit in his face and ran back to the SUV laughing.   The last thing I saw was the man on his cell phone, hopefully calling the police on her.

RoadRage0126-04

I attend college across the country from where my family lives. The last time I went home for winter break, after being away for 4 months, my dad picked me up at the airport and drove me home. I was telling him about something that happened at school, when someone drove up behind him and started tailgating him. He drives pretty fast himself, so this is pretty unusual. As I continued to talk, he moved over and let the other guy pass him and they both extended their middle fingers. Then, without a word, my dad turned on his brights, sped up and started tailgating the guy! I might mention that it was December and the roads were a little icy. Then the other guy slammed on his brakes and my dad, following much too closely, almost ran into him. I was speechless!

RoadRage0209-04

I have 2 road rage stories! The first one happened several years ago. My husband was driving down a busy road when this guy starts driving really recklessly around us. He would speed up and get in front of us and then slam his brakes. My husband would get over into the next lane to avoid him, and the guy would move back over and get in front of us again and slam his brakes. I am not sure what he was trying to prove, but this went on for several miles. It was during rush hour so traffic was pretty heavy. We finally came up to a red light and I guess the guy got nervous that my husband would get out of our car and give the what for, so he reaches up under his seat and lifts a baseball bat up to show my husband he was armed. My husband retaliated in the best possible way he could have. He held up his police officer's badge for him to see! The guy settled down VERY QUICKLY!!!

The second one happened to me in a mall parking lot. I live in a small town and our mall does not have 2 lanes to travel when trying to find a parking space. You can either go up or you can go down the lane. There are HUGE white arrows that let you know which way to go (again, it is either UP or DOWN). Fortunately, I try to drive defensively, I watch out for the idiots that shouldn't have a license. One busy Saturday I am trying to find a place to park. All of a sudden, as I am going up the row, this woman acts like she is going to turn down the row I am on. I stopped so that she had plenty of time to see me and plenty of room to see the BIG WHITE arrow pointing up. She sits there for a minute, waiting for me to move, when I don't (because I can't-she is in the way!) she starts screaming at me from her car! I was stunned and pointed to the arrow that is in between her car and my car and is in very plain site. She proceeds to flip me off with both fingers, screaming at me the whole time!! She finally speeds off and goes down the next row. 

Since I couldn't find a spot to park in the row I just left, I went down the same row she turned onto. I notice that she is still screaming in her car. After the second row we both go down, I realized she was STILL screaming and now I am concerned that she thinks I am following her. I could care less about crazy woman, although I would love to tell her that before you flip people off, make sure that you are not going the WRONG WAY!!! I finally made some distance from her because she obviously was in need of medication! Both times I think to myself they are very lucky that we do not live in Miami!! (A lot of people are armed!!!) Be careful the next time you feel that road rage creeping up on you! You never what kind of a maniac you could be dealing with, or if they may have a weapon!

RoadRage0331-04

I recently spent the weekend in DC, preparing for an upcoming move. On the drive back to Massachusetts, traffic was completely stopped somewhere in Delaware due to a very bad accident. All four Northbound lanes were closed, and as my friends and I watched, a helicopter descended and landed no more than 300 yards in front of us. We assumed that we would be stopped for quite a while, so we rolled the windows down (the weather was beautiful, and we weren't exactly thrilled about returning to chilly New England), turned off the car, and sat there talking to each other. After a few minutes, we noticed many other people around us turning off their cars, getting out, stretching, and the like.

A few more minutes went by (on the scale of 5... its not like we'd been sitting there for hours), and I started to notice a stream of people walking past my car, toward the accident ahead. They gathered on the right side of the highway, where they could presumably see the carnage ahead. At this point, I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt... perhaps they only wanted to see how far ahead of them the highway was closed, or wanted to make sure the appropriate emergency vehicles had arrived.

These hopes were quickly shattered, however, as several people took out cameras and camera phones and began to document what lay ahead of them. One man even had a pair of binoculars, which he passed around to not only his young children, but to several other curious onlookers.

What kind of twisted individual wants a picture of a high-speed car accident? I can imagine these people leafing through photo albums with their grandchildren some day... "This is Disney World. This is the White House. This is where I was lucky enough to see someone lying on the side of the road with his head crushed." Sick bastards.

RoadRage0424-04

One evening I was following my husband to a pub for a get-together of his co-workers, I had our infant in my car. We slowed down to take a left turn, using our directionals. My husband turned, and as I started to turn some jerk in a red sports car passed me on the left. Now I was turning left so I almost hit the jackass. If you must pass someone turning left you pass on the right side!!

RoadRage0427-04

This happened many years before the term road rage existed.  I had taken the bus to the downtown area and was waiting to cross an intersection when I heard loud honking and saw an irate woman screaming at the driver ahead to MOVE.  He couldn't--they had the red light and people were in the intersection.  Somehow I filed the information on this woman's car in my mind.  A few weeks later I had taken the bus to the downtown and was waiting to cross at the same intersection when the same car and same driver came up behind a driver waiting at the red light.  This time there was no one behind her.  She backed up a bit, then rammed his car, and then went around him and on her merry way. 

RoadRage0426-04

A few years ago my husband, myself and our daughter (at the time about a year old) were driving north to visit my family.  This is a drive that generally takes about 7 hours, switching from highway to highway, a bit tedious but worth it to see my family.    We were moving from a highway to a toll road in the middle of the mountains between Pennsylvania and New York.  The entrance to the toll road was narrow with only 1 out of 3 tollbooths open.  Needless to say the line to get through the tollbooth was long and full of 18 wheel trucks.  The line moved along slowly, but it did move along.    

One of our pet peeves is people who see a long line and instead of waiting their turn attempt to cut in (even at the danger of causing an accident).  Which is what a woman (and we later saw, her 2 children) decided to do.  We had been waiting about 30 minutes and were getting closer to the tollbooth when she tried to nose her car in line infront of us (and about 5 other cars).  As you may guess we did not let her in.   The line moved along and 5 minutes later we were on the toll road, the woman and her car forgotten.  About 45 minutes later my husband told me that he noticed that when ever he made a lane or speed change a car about 10 cars back would do the same.  I looked in the side mirror and noticed the same car that tried to cut in line making the same speed and lane changes as we did.   

After about 20 minutes the woman and her car caught up with us.  She pulled up in the left lane, deliberately sneered/laughed at us and sped away.  It was then that we noticed the 2 children in the back.   While we may have been at fault for being ungenerous in the toll line, I till this day do not understand why someone would deliberately follow another car full of people and things that you do not know about with their children in the car.  It seems to me to be too dangerous just to pass someone who you think you have the right to be in front of.  Why risk yourself or your children?

RoadRage0611-04

It was pouring rain by the time I got to the movie theater parking lot. This is a cinema with 18 theaters and, you guessed it, not nearly enough parking spaces. I've never been one to sit and wait 10 minutes to get a space near the door; I usually just find whatever's available and park there. But it was raining, as noted, and dark.

Anyway, after 15 minutes (by the clock) of circling, I saw a car with brake lights on, about to pull out. I backed up slightly and pulled to one side so I wouldn't block anyone, put on my turn signal, and even rolled down my window and put my arm out to signal a turn. I did everything but hang up a sign saying, "I'm taking this parking space."

Guess what -- In the time it took the car to back out, a huge SUV pulled in from the other end of the lot and proceeded to position himself to take the space. I motioned for him to please roll down my window and politely explained, "I've been waiting fifteen minutes for this space, sir." His response: "It's just a space." Great, I thought, he's going to let me have it.

WRONG! He barreled in, and as he did, I saw his personalized license plate: 2HISGLORY. As he and his wife and three children got out of the SUV, I thought, what a nice example for someone who displays his faith on his license plate to set for his children.

P.S. I found a space at the farthest end of the parking lot, but somehow, I didn't mind.

RoadRage0615-04