Road Rage

by teenyuck 16 Replies latest jw friends

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  teenyuck

  writerpen's thread on "What irritates you?" seemed to be leaning towards the automobile as a major source of irritability.

  I agreed with everyone's irritabilities and realized that the only time I am screaming mad is in the car.

  Just yesterday I had to have my brakes "rotared" or something like that. It had a wiggle in the front and they explained it could be heat build up from slamming on the brakes. I have 7500 miles on my car and have had to slam on the brakes twice because an idiot with a cell phone stuck to their head, turned into on-coming traffic without looking. My car being the on-coming one.

  I turned it loose. I screamed, called them names and mouthed words I knew they could read. For the first time, on the second occurance, I actually got in front of them and slammed on my brakes so they had to stop. (I know, very stupid) But I got their attention. Then as I drove off I thought how ridiculous I was to let some idiot control my emotions that way. Then within a few more miles of driving, I got mad again at the stupidity of people who do not pay attention and cause accidents.

  The worst incident of screaming at someone occured when I lived in California. I lived approximately 10 miles from work and it took approximately 45 minutes to get there...at 5:15 am. I started work at 6:00 am and if you were 1 minute late, you were docked 15 minutes pay.

  As I drove to work one morning I got on the highway and was immediately enveloped by traffic (this is now about 5:50 am). I was behind a Mercedes (big one) and could not cut over to pass. The car was going about 40 in a 55 mile zone. I started yelling at the person and mouthed "Read My Lips...You Are a FucXing idiot." I yelled some more and tried to pass. About 3 minutes passed while I was behind this vechicle, which seemed like an hour. All I could see were 15 minutes of docked pay.

  Finally I was able to cut into traffic and pass. I looked over to glare at the driver and I was looking into my manager's face!!! I almost cried.

  I got to work, ran into the building, sat down and started working. I told a few co-workers about it and they were all surprised. Our boss did not have a Mercedes. No one at our company, in ur division, could afford a Mercedes.

  2 hours into my shift, my manager, Christine walked over. She stopped, looked at me and said "Oh, by the way, I CAN read lips." And she walked away. I thought I was going to be fired.

  She came by later and apologized for driving slow. She was in her boyfriends car and was not paying attention--she said she was thinking about how nice it would be to be married to him. I apologized and she was very gracious. I did not get fired.

  I did this same thing again 10 years later at a local bank, where I live now. A man in a Mercedes SUV cut me off in the bank parking lot. He acted liked he owned the bank. I called him a FucXing idiot and a few more choice phrases. As he drove past me I looked at his license plate. I thought I could report his horrible driving....I was staring into the license plate of the CEO of my husband's company. His license plate is the company name.

  I came home, told my husband and he was horrified. He made me go over, step by step, what happened. "did he look you in the eye?" "Did he look at you?" I could say no to both. I had not yet met the man. My husband joined the company a few months prior. I did see him however and gave my husband a very clear picture of what he looked like. Yes, it was him...and his vanity plate.

  I actually just met the CEO a few weeks ago. My husband and I were in the local mall and all of a sudden he stops and says "Michael, hello, great to see you." I looked up into the face of the CEO. He introduced himself and said I looked familiar!!!

  Third times a charm. I did it again a few months ago. A woman in a Lexus SUV cut me off by making a left hand turn right in front of me. I again had to swerve and brake or I would have hit her. I was stuck behind her and called her the same names I call everyone behind the wheel.

  I took my usual way home and as I was sitting at a stop sign the SUV drives by. The woman in the SUV, obviously recognizing my car, looks directly at me and I am looking into the face of my neighbor. She lives about 4 houses down. I have never seen her car...until that day. She looked at me and recognition struck.

  The moral of the story is....make sure you don't know the head/car in front of you when yelling obcenities. Even if you don't recognize it, it is a small, small world.

  edited for typo...Opps, I did it again!

  Edited by - puffsrule on 25 July 2002 18:45:53
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  Incense_and_Peppermints

  The woman in the SUV, obviously recognizing my car, looks directly at me and I am looking into the face of my neighbor. She lives about 4 houses down.

  yikes. sort of the oppostie thing happened to me just last night. i was driving home and was in the left-turn lane going into my neighborhood. this huge white van pulls up behind me and starts honking frantically. i look in my rear-view mirror and there's this man i have never seen before smiling and honking like crazy. i didn't acknowledeg him and completed my turn and he stayed right behind me the whole way. i thought jeez is this guy following me or what. i thought i had inadvertently cut him off or something. so i pulled over in front of a house not mine, with one hand on my cell phone and then he starts to pull in behind me then thinks better of it and drives away. this morning i went for a walk to the park and walked right past his house. he lives about six doors down and i had talked to him one time in passing. and he was out in his yard fixing his sprinkler and says "hi i realized after the fact that i must have scared you last night" and i said huh? oh yeah... (freaked me out all right.)

  p.s. i never do anything to people when i drive, even if i get pi$$ed off. we have too many drive-by shootings in this town...
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  Gopher

  That's one of the inscrutable things about life. People seem to change personalities when they get behind the wheel. Or, maybe it is that the worst or most careless part of their personality emerges??

  I guess it's like my dad once said, some drivers act like they got their licenses as a toy prize in a box of Cracker Jacks.

  I guess instead of getting mad, we should just leave early to allow enough "wiggle room" in the schedule, just in case of a traffic jam / accident / slow driver. Turn on some relaxing jazz music, or anything to keep the nerves calm for tense driving situations.

  Then each time we arrive safely at the destination (whether work or home), just count it as a good thing and get on with life. Don't let road incidents ruin your whole day.

  Easier said than done? I suppose. (I recently moved to within a 4-minute drive of my job, whereas it was a 40-minute drive through heavy freeway traffic. I like my commute much better now.)
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  teenyuck

  I have been really working on not letting these irritations ruin my day. I recently decided that to let an unknown person get me down for their poor driving is just not worth it.

  I sing along to my favorite songs now. I don't care if I am seen singing. I never would have done this in public a few years ago.

  I also wave when I do something stupid to at least let the other party know I acknowledge my dumb move. It is nice when someone waves at you for something as simple as letting them make a turn before you do.
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  Francois

  I know just what you mean. You take people of even above average intelligence and put them behind the wheel of an automobile and even before they crank the engine, their brains promptly turn into a giant bowl of cow poop!

  And then they get on the road.

  I can't tell you how frequently I've wished from the bottom of my heart that I had a hood-mounted fifty caliber heavy machine gun on my truck.

  Let me take this opportunity to those of you who drive with, not your thumbs, but your entire arm stuck up your ass:

  If you're not passing traffic, get the hell out of the left lane and stay out!!!!! And if you're in Atlanta, be especially careful about this.

  francois
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  Beck_Melbourne

  I have a similar description to yours Francois...I swear ta god that sometimes a lump of poop puts on a shirt and tie and then climbs into their car and drives to work in the lane next to mine.... OR...sometimes they put on earings and liptstick!

  Either way they're poop! I drive into the city every week day...ya gotta hate people who use mobiles while the drive without handsfree...that shits me! And people who don't use their indicator...gggrrrr...I have had some close calls...never had an accident in the 4 yrs I've been driving into the city every day...so I must be doing something right at least.

  Beck

  ps...I&P I never do anything either, but I think the most terrible things LOL...I do swear out loud though, for some reason I feel a lot of relief...maybe there's a mantra for overcoming road rage lol.
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  Bendrr

  Puffs, don't lose the road-rage entirely. Regardless of the circumstances you shared, they still pulled some dumbass moves that could have hurt or killed someone. That has to be brought to their attention and since a cop is not handy to do so, someone has to. Namely you.

  Let me put it in a different light. I used to love motorcycles. Rode one everywhere I went for a long time. My last bike was 3 years ago. I saved up the money and bought a cherry Suzuki Intruder. That's not one of those "crotch-rockets" by the way. I spent hours cleaning and polishing and maintaining my pride and joy and hours riding everywhere I could. It all ended in just a few seconds. Some idiot pulled right out in front of me and I had to choose between the choice of road-rash or a head-on collision. I took the road rash.

  He said (predictably) "I didn't see you". Now I was in full road-rage at the time. Threw my helmet across the street and everything. I told him that if he was so fuXXing blind as to not see a bike with the high-beam on in broad daylight then he needed to retest for his license. The officer on the scene was also a motorcycle cop so the other driver got a further treatment in guilt. (we bikers do indeed stick together)

  To cut to the moral of that story, I gave up riding because of that. I could have been killed because this fool was just too oblivious to other traffic to wait to pull out of the Home Depot parking lot. What if I had had one of my little neices riding with me?

  I summed it up pretty succinctly (sp?) last year when I was explaining my decision to quit riding to a friend of mine. He had just bought a sweet Harley. I told him "dude, someday you'll be riding down the road without a care in the world but somewhere out there some dumbass soccer mom is gonna be barrelling down the road in her SUV yakking away on her cell-phone and she'll never see you".

  I don't have road-rage, I AM road-rage. When someone does something stupid on the road that affects me, I let them know. I don't care what power you have over me, when you f*** up on the road with me, you'll do it to someone else - maybe a car full of kids - and I'm damn well going to say something.

  As far as cell-phones and driving, I say get them off the road. This civilization has made it this far without phones on the road and we can continue to make it without them. Hang the damn phone up and drive!

  Mike.
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  detective

  I hate to be the one to bring this up but I have to caution you to be extremely careful in controlling your road rage. I knew a fellow who took a cross bow arrow in the chest and died after he pulled over to argue with another driver. It's not worth it. it's never worth it.
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  ashitaka

  I live in Jersey, so I know what you guys are talking about. Assholes, (normally from PA) hog the left lane, Jerseyans talk on the cell phones and cut off tractor trailers, and New Yorkers ride the ass like they want a piece of it.

  And know what I do? Deadpan. Sunglasses on, no expression.

  Some asshole starts screaming at me and giving me the finger (to this day I don't know why). What do it do? Stare at him, not emoting. He starts screaming worse. Even less emotion. Imagine a stone. Pretty soon, he looks like he wants to kill himself, just to get a reaction out of me. Nothing.

  HAHAHA

  The best way to piss assholes off is to not emote. The best way not to piss people off in the first place is to be courteous to everyone.

  But, I live in Jersey....so that's totally out of the question.
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  teenyuck

  I must confess to yelling at someone today. It felt good.

  I was taught to be a very defensive driver. I can predict with great certainty what people will do. For instance, at a stop light, people invariably get behind the car in front of them, even when a spot is open in the lane next to them and they can safely change lanes. I try to stay back, yet get where I want. People cannot seem to figure out what lane they should be in. That drives me crazy.

  I try to predict what someone will do. I am not wrong often. It is always the person with the phone who is not paying attention or the driver who is so afraid of the auto that they drive stupidly and then create mayhem.

  Just a few weeks ago, an man and his wife were killed on I-270 (the highway around Columbus) because they were driving too slow in the dark...an 18 wheeler did not see them in time and ran over them in their car. Both died and the truck driver was not faulted. Witnesses said the man behind the wheel of the car did not seem to realize he was in a 65 zone and in the right lane. He was going about 40. The truck did not have time to slow down. That is just dumb.

  I drive very carefully, yet fast.

  I did have some nut job in an old SUV, one of those pre-Explorer Chevy types, pull in front of me and pull a gun when we first moved here. He got in front of me on an off ramp, pulled side ways and made me stop my car. He came up and told me he was a cop, pulled a gun and said he was going to report me. I told him I was reporting him and he had better let me go. His jacket said SWAT and the license was not a normal one. It looked like a government vechicle.

  He screamed at me and I gunned it and fled. I went to the rental office of the place where we were renting and they said they had heard of him. We called the cops and they came by....no witnesses and I could not give a license plate number. There was not one. Just the vechicle and his description. They ended up telling me they could not locate him and had to end the investigation. I actually got nervous and watched for months for some nut to come by and maybe shoot me.

  I just remembered this. I still am on that stretch of highway and watch for him. I have never seen him or the vechicle again. It is always in the back of my mind, though.