Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello!
The office discussion today is about road rage, or being the victim of.

Anyone have any tales that I can pass off as my own to entertain us?

It's not quite road rage, but we had a very odd one at the weekend. Ruth was driving us down a 60mph country lane on the way back from her parents, and a chap speeds up to about 3 inches off our rear bumper, and starts doing that pointing at his eyes, then pointing at us "I'm watching you" thing, then slows down until he's at about 10 mph and blocks the car behind him for a while - so he duly disappears from our rearview. A few minutes later he zooms back up behind us, starts doing the eye thing, and then backs off again and blocks the car behind. He then turns up AGAIN, and so I get out my cameraphone, turn around and take a photo of him and do the pointy at eyes thing back at him, and then he backs off and disappears off down a side road.

Fucking bizarre.

Cars do weird things to people.

Ooh, also, a few days before that Ruth was driving the kids to playgroup down a 20mph lane near us, and a local zooms up behind her sitting a few inches off her bumper. This woman is renowned locally for breaking the law when she's driving (always speeding, has made a lot of pedestrians on the shared-use 20mph lanes have to jump out of the way, literally, and her kid is never strapped in either). Ruth stops, gets out of the car to tell her off for sitting on her bumper, woman starts screaming and swearing at her and then tries to drive of through Ruth. After Ruth gets back in the car, Olly and Sam were quiet quiet, and then Olly says "she was a naughty lady, mummy. Are you going to tell the police?".

We're considering reporting her to the police and to social services.

Goodness.

Or, to put it another way, cars allow weird people an additional outlet for their weirdness.

I think that it's because they isolate the driver from the environment, so we'd need to get someone to draw aggro from a convertible driver at some point.

It's entertaining when you suddenly realise that your loud, sweary diatribe is audible to everyone within at least 20m, including the idiot you're ranting about.

Don't get road rage and then try to beat up my dad.

Heh, I used to be terrible with road rage many years ago, including on one forgettable occasion when I 'offered out' some geezer who turned out to be some black belt or other. Ouch, served me right.

Not something I'm proud of, obv., but then I was a very angry young man, back in the day. Wouldn't dream of doing anything like that now, I wouldn't hurt a fly.

Haha, some clown chased after me and invited me to a fight once, in a layby, after I undertook him due to him being a dawdling pillock. I declined the fight

That's what happened with my dad.

This is my dad:


He's rather tall, and strong. That's him now, at 50 years old, though. This was about 20 years ago. To be fair, the guy did threaten to smash the windows with me in the car, then offered my dad around the corner, where he claimed he was going to stab him.

I was told to wait in the car (I had an ice-cream, dammit!). I don't think he did any damage, but stopped the guy wanting to hit him any more.

Nothing too exciting myself but my dad has a story he likes to roll out occasionally. About 15 years ago, some boy racer dangerously cut him up by overtaking when there was no room on a bypass, only to then find himself a couple of cars behind the kid at a set of temporary traffic lights. Emboldened by RAGE my old man gets out the car, goes up to the boy racer, opens the door and punches him in the face.

The kid then tries to get out the car, at which point my dad realises a stand-up fight isn't a good plan, and so traps the poor kids legs in the door while giving him an earful. He then hops back in his car and drives off, having built up a crowd of interested traffic. Silly bugger could have had himself up on an assault charge but amazingly nothing ever came of it.

He recalls it with a guilty smile and still can't believe he did it. My dad is the very picture of a pacifist.

That reminds me of another one - the turning to my farm road is off a fairly fast straight bit, cars usually travelling the limit or a bit over. So you have to be aware when turning off (especially if you have to wait for oncoming traffic) to slow down a bit in advance, indicate early, all that. So one time I do all that, and am stopped waiting to cross and there's this little Nova getting rapidly bigger in the rear view mirror. I can hear he's locked up so I stamp on the go pedal again to make some room, and sure enough he slides to a stop several yards past where I had been.
"Emboldened by rage" I hope out, haul his door open and bellow "pay attention for fucks sake. now back up!" and he meekly does. Without knifing me or anything.

Obviously I would never normally do that but it could easily have been a serious accident, averted only by my lighting fast reactions

Yikes, he's a big man - fair play to him, he looks very fit for 50!

Well, of course, it goes without saying that I've never threatened a woman in my entire life, even in my darkest, angriest days, in fact my speciality was always to threaten/fight bigger - often much bigger - blokes than myself, who deserved whatever was coming to them in many cases. I was a right little English Bull Terrier (I'm only 5'10").

To be sure, I was a twat and I'm quite ashamed of my distant past - but I was never a bully.

You should have seen it when I introduced him and Craig. I had warned Craig that he was very tall and built, but I think he assumed I was exagerating.

I wouldn't say that 5ft10" was small, Cap'n C. I always thought that 5ft 8" was about average.

I have a couple of stories (that are actually mine, everyone else's in the office are shit), one that involves the legendary title "A car drove at me so I punched it".

I was working for a large "Fix your PC in your office" company when I was about nineteen, so, er, 13 years ago. I had an Astra 'sport' whoo!
Anyway, I was coming onto the A14 from the A12 when I spied an identical car to mine (same colour, too). Obviously, we had a race. As we hared along a BMW joined in, and, not being an Astra, got into the lead.
Speed cameras were quite rare at the time (and certainly not bright yellow), so it was a bit of a shock to see one go off at the BMW as it went under the bridge. Other Astra and I stamped on our brakes, and as he went under it flashed him too. Everyone stopped in a layby not far up the road.
Other Astra man got out as I did, and asked if it had got him. I said it had. He looked miffed.
BMW man got out of his car, and started shouting and raging "I'm going to lose my fucking job!" etc. Anyway, Astra man said something like "have you been caught before" and the BMW man punched him in the face, knocking him onto his car.
I leapt forward to pacify him (in the non-threatening way), and this back when I used to do martial arts and was nails. Anyway, I said something like "Hey man, he's only tiny (he was), what's wrong with you?". I used my leet training to get sort-of into a halfmoon stance, watching for any sign that BMW man was going to attack me as well, at which point I'd make him fucking sorry.
He hit me in the jaw, and I fell over.
Feeling a bit of a dick, I thought of something suitably cool to say ("You messed up my suit."), stood up and punched him back. He fell over too, but apparently didn't feel like getting up right away.
Astra man leaned into his BMW and hurled his keys over to the other side of the A14, and we drove off.

Second story later, but I must tell you about my awesome father-in-law, who is super posh, the sort of posh where they don't care what people think and basically do what they like, etc, etc. Proper old-school posh.

Anyway, he was driving around in a clapped out Escort (I think - he could afford a set of Jags if he wanted, but, you know, super-posh) when he nearly hit a van that had stopped at traffic lights, because he was drifting into its lane. In his panic to get his spare hand onto the wheel to wind the car out of the way, he hit his horn.
Van man got out.
Van man was big.
It didn't even occur to Hugh that the man might not be friendly, so he wound down his window. A tidal wave of classical music at full volume assaulted van driver, who physically recoiled. Hugh turned it down.
"No wonder you're not paying attention to the road, with that Mozart blaring out like that!" said the van driver.
"It's Brahms, actually." said Hugh as the light turned green, and drove off

Awesome

So, erm, why did you all stop after that speed camera thing?

Dunno, actually. The other two stopped, so I did.
Maybe the BMW driver pulled over to shout at himself, or something.

Didn't happen to me, but I witnessed it.

I was following an old Rover through town centre, and approached a fork in the road where most cars turn right to go up a hill into the town centre. Left at the fork eventually gets to the same destination but often arrives quicker. There's also a left turning just before the fork, and this is where the perpetrator of this incident came from.

He was driving a green, chavved-up Ford Focus with illegally tinted opaque side windows, a stupid spoiler on it and blinging wheels, waiting to come out of the left-turn and come past me, towards where I'd come from.

The Rover, being driven by an elderly gentleman with his wife in the passenger seat, approached the fork and started moving to turn up the right fork, before noticing that traffic was backed up on the hill, so he slowed down as he approached it.

Focus-driver took this as a sign he could pull out, and did so, in front of the Rover. Rover-driver hits the stop pedal and comes to a halt. He didn't parp his horn or make any rude gestures or anything. Perhaps a bit of tyre-squeal.

Focus-driver then drives past him, stops, gets out of the car (revealing that he is a massive bodybuilder-type dude) and, despite his attractive blonde passenger pleading with him otherwise, proceeds to start shouting abuse and obscenities at the elderly guy in the Rover, while pounding on the driver's door and window with his fists.

Rover-driver's wife is quite clearly frightened out of her mind and starts flailing her arms about inside, and her husband peels off up the hill and leaves the guy behind. Bodybuilder gets back in his car and launches off in a cloud of tyre smoke and skidmarks.

It's the only time I've ever seen a road rage incident "in the flesh", and I remain mystified as to just what the hell made the guy flip. I reported the incident to plod but don't know if anything came of it.

plod never does anything about anything car-related unless they witness it.

A friend of mine got smacked in the face in Brixton once by a rather irate Golf driver.

I went to his house on the train (Tulse hill) and he offered to drive me home. What I didn't realise was he drove like a fucking arsehole and pretty much annoyed every one on the road. After cutting up a driver in a Golf (I called him a cunt for it) we then got to a red light. What we didn't see was the Golf driver getting out of his car, walking up to the window and reaching in to punch my friend in the face.

Needless to say the punishment was rather fitting for the crime so I just sat there.

Thankfully when I lived in the US the roads were very empty and large, so the rage never really kicked in. What did boil my piss though was that in the USA nearly all roads are two lane (hence Rob Zombie's song, two lane blacktop). However, most 'soccer moms' don't seem to fucking realise that those lanes are not both for driving in at the speed of your choice. One is a driving lane and the other is a passing lane. This meant that whenever I drove from Egg Harbor to Hammonton I would be treated to an eight mile stretch of road where two 'soccer moms' would be in their people carriers doing 40, side by side, in a 55 zone. Passing was impossible so by the time I got to Hammonton I was in a rotten mood.

You know, I was going to say "other than speed camera stuff", but that's basically plod witnessing it, though.

I and others I know have tried reporting dangerous driving type stuff before, with witnesses, and the police don't want to know. I talked to my wife's cousin's hubby (he's a police officer) and he said they won't bother investigating any purely driving related thing (I mean here speeding, dangerous driving, that sort of thing) if it's not witnessed by a police officer. Assaults (i.e. road rage) and accidents etc are different, though.

OH YOU GONE DONE IT NOW

Done what?

I was wondering the other day - if you get done by two speed cameras on the same stretch of road, is that one offence or two? And if it's two, you've surely committed infinite offences betwewen the two cameras.

It oh so very very very very much isn't "plod witnessing it".
I suspect we've been here before

?

It is, though. It's plod's camera. Plod looks at the speed camera film. Simples. Tch.

Plod seeing snapshot of event != Plod seeing event

And does anybody actually look at speed camera snapshots? Or is the whole thing largely automated?

I'm pretty sure the first actual person to know about it is you when you open the envelope, but I guess there's a list somewhere the police can peek at if they want to.

Yep, entirely automated, I believe.

Pffft. Still plod's camera.

And what if it was robocop, eh? You wouldn't argue with him.

Are they plod's cameras? I thought the "Safety Camera Partnerships" weren't actually po-po?

Alright, maybe the plod don't own the cameras or look at the film, but with the yellow reflective bits on they look a tiny bit like a plod so it's still basically the same as plod seeing you do it. OKAY?

Yep. See also: bananas and the sun.

Photosynthesis means eating a banana is a bit like eating the sun.

HA.

I'm not sure this one is 100% real but my local paper had a report of someone hitting a driver through his (closed) car window. Apparently broke his fingers\hand along with the glass.

Was it the Peckham Terminator?

A man drove into the back of me whilst I was stopped at a roundabout on the motorbike. He beeped his horn and began gesticulating wildly at me. I gave him the international sign that I was about to do a wheelie, and fucked off.

Another time, I'd filtered past the quarter mile of traffic waiting to turn onto the A41 from Ambrosden and pulled into the gap 3 cars from the front which appeared as the car at the junction found a small space to pull out into. Imagine my surpise when the bloke behind me decided to use the pavement to get past me and out onto the A41 whilst waving his fist at me. I think he was confused as he also gave the international sign that he was about to do a wheelie, but was in a car, so couldn't. I decided not to pass him.

Wuss.

I hate BMW drivers, there I said it the worse drivers ever on the motorways.

I was a fucking awesome BMW driver, and did what I could to mend our reputation, by being courteous and always letting people out and stuffs. Also, sticking to the speed limit.

Watch it ! That could be considered slander or libel..

You are rare, I went to Heathrow on Monday & got cut up twice by BMW drivers. One plonker who was in the third lane & decided he wanted to take the exit, went across all three lanes oblivious to the other traffic.

Or truthful & fact

No, as he's not referring to the actions of an identifiable individual or a company.

Also, slander is spoken, not written.

I also thought Audi drivers were worse - just because they can't afford a Biemer they seem to carry so many chips on their shoulder about it

I know Clarko said that all the cunts were now driving Audis... except him, obv.

I like small engine/car drivers. They know their place & stay in the first lane