Road Rage

[sailormnop]

Honking your horn was probably a mistake. The incident was already over when you avoided the accident, and honking only runs the risk of triggering a bad reaction in the other driver if he is unstable.

Yes, in an ideal world, he would have heard your horn and thought, "Now what did I do to deserve that? ... Oh yes, I cut him off. I wil surely change my driving habits at once!"

In the real world, people are living in such a self-absorbed haze that the thought of being wrong never occurs to them. Honking after the fact doesn't serve to educate - I wish it did.

[DefensiveCarry.com]

[kavity]

This is one of the many reasons I decided to carry. Back in highschool a friend and I were driving in my car and some guy startd driving next to us and starring at us. I decided to take the next turn to get away from the situation because he was acting really creepy. Unfortunately, the short cut route I took dumped us back out at a light directly in front of him. Apparently he took this as a challenge and ran the red light to catch up to me.

It followed us for a while and he almost ran me off the road when I tried to speed up to get away from him. He kept trying to rear end me and bump me. It took all I had not to slam on my brakes get out and throw down...but I was 17 at the time and he looked to be mid 20's. My friend called 911 but the operator was compeltely retarded and told me to go to my house and wait for the police there...like hell I was going to let this guy know where I lived. I told her that we were on the way to the police station and hung up. Luckily there was a police officer down the road who I flagged down (who then pulled me over). The guy sped off and I am surprised the officer didn't chase after him considering he ran another red light and spun tires...

I actually had 2 more incidents with this guy after that one...one which involved him coming after me while I was in my car with a baseball bat. I have NO IDEA who this guy was and I never did anything to him. Either its mistaken identity or he has some serious issues, but it made me realize that cops aren't gonna help me, my dad (who was in the middle east..soldier)can't help me, ect. I am the only one that can help myself. Eventually I had a restraining order placed on him and I only ran into him one more time a couple years later at a blockbuster. He gave me a "im so ticked at you look" and I just starred him down--I had had enough and I felt more confident with my size and ability to handle a confrontation with him at that point, but he just kept walking and I have never seen him since.