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Hello! Would you like to talk about your road rage experiences? Here is a new thread for doing that! I wasn't sure if this would be okay to start, so I sought the blessing of a mod. My hope is that this thread will have a kind of chill vibe for reflective storytelling and discussion despite the subject matter—it's okay to air your grievances of course and it's rage we're talking about here, and I expect that some will not agree with others about how they handled a situation, but let's try to keep the peace! We rely on each other to stay safe on the road, but it's okay to admit to having made some hotheaded choices out there. What's important is learning from these experiences so we all become safer drivers as we go. So let's chat! I'll explain why I wanted to start this thread in the first place. I saw a little road rage go down a few weeks ago* and it got me wondering about it. When a driver gets mad at another driver on the road, a lot of the time they start to create situations that risk causing an accident (mostly cutting off the driver they're mad at). Why is it worth it? They're putting themselves in danger, or at the very least their car which can get pretty expensive to fix up, if it doesn't get totaled entirely. I don't see anything to gain from road rage behavior—it doesn't seem like the type of fight anyone can actually "win". So I'm really interested to hear your own stories about it! If you've witnessed it, if it happened to you directly, if you were a passenger in a car involved in a road rage incident (instigating and/or being targeted), or if you've gotten pretty heated yourself and acted on it in some way. If you "started it" or reacted in kind to another driver, I'm curious why it became important to you. I'm pretty naïve and forgiving and generally timid so it's hard for me to wrap my head around why road rage is so prevalent. I'm also interested in your opinions about road rage from a kind of statistics point of view—is it particularly bad and/or common where you live (your specific state or country, for example)? Do you think drivers in certain types of cars are more often guilty of road rage than others (makes or models or something else)? (Hopefully this question can be lighthearted and doesn't cause an argument; you may disregard it if it seems like an invitation for trouble.) Any other thoughts you have about it? tl;dr: Please tell me all your stories about and thoughts on road rage! *I'll tell you about the road rage incident I saw, for those curious. It didn't get super ugly or anything, so no pulling over and fists flying or anything particularly wild. I live in Massachusetts and I was on 95-N in the afternoon. I was in the far left lane where we're all expected to go pretty fast, so I'm going about 80 MPH keeping pace with the pickup truck in front of me while keeping a couple car-lengths between us. A Camry comes flying in from the next lane over and gets between me and the pickup truck, and immediately they got right on top of the truck's rear end. The truck didn't slow down but it didn't change lanes to make way for the Camry driver who maybe had to pee super bad or their baby was getting born, but the Camry driver didn't seem interested in going back into the lane they came in from to pass the truck. After a few moments the pickup truck driver started to get into the next lane over ... but they were doing it very, very slowly, just leisurely drifting over, really taking their time to move aside for the Camry. For a second I thought the truck driver was going to fake them out entirely and ease back into the lane they started in, but they did move all the way over eventually. At this point I figured the Camry driver would just haul rear end because that's what they wanted to do in the first place, but instead they jerked their car into the pickup truck's lane, cutting them off pretty sharply. This is where it stopped making any sense at all to me; I get that the truck driver was messing with them, but the Camry driver still got what they wanted in the end, and now they were taking what seemed like precious time out of their day to get into a tiff with the truck driver. The truck driver was apparently still feeling spicy because they got back into the far left lane, then cut off the Camry. Then the Camry did the exact same thing again, changing lanes just to cut off the truck. At this point the Camry driver seemed to decide they'd won the argument because they got back into the far left lane and zoomed away, and that was the end of that.
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Jun 10, 2022 01:37
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| # ? May 12, 2024 17:09 |
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That's the thing I don't understand, you're in some big god drat hurry but also willing to spend time loving with someone. I've witnessed more than I've participated in. Here's some stories. I was following two cars through my own neighborhood a few years ago, at about 25 mph which is the speed limit. The second car was only about 4 feet off the bumper of the first car. The first car started to turn on to his side street, so the second car swerved around him to speed away. Just as he did that the first car flipped him off. Second car slams on the brakes and reverses to engage and try to pick a fight or yell or something, which forced me to stop. The best part was that now I got to lay on my horn and make him feel stupid because he realized what he was doing and drove off. The most interesting road rage I ever saw was while I was at a stop light, two cars pull over on to an empty side street, and both guys get out. Both guys were fit and muscular but one was about 4 inches taller and proportionally bigger. The small guy walks up to the big guy and before anything even starts the big guy just two-hand shoves him right in the chest and he literally flew backwards with feet over his head, landing on his back on the ground. I was completely shocked and had never seen anything like it in real life before. Small guy got up but kept his distance and started yelling, and then my light turned green. The whole time I was trying to decide whether to try and get involved and maybe break it up, but I had places to go. I generally am chill on the road and forgiving of simple mistakes, but I do call everyone around me an idiot and once in a while get my blood up and throw a finger or do something dumb and get one flipped at me. But if it ever escalated I'd be the first to back down. Like I would just slow down, stop or do a u-turn and leave the situation.
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Jun 10, 2022 19:44
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After living in DFW for half my life, I don't even notice most road rage poo poo anymore.  I just camp in the middle lane with cruise on with a respectable buffer between myself and the vehicle in front of me.Go to Dallas. Spend 10 minutes on I-30 or I-635. Or even US-75 (IT'S NOT loving I-75 YOU DUMB FUCKS, STOP PUTTING THAT ON YOUR BUSINESS CARDS/WEBSITES/GOOGLE BUSINESS PAGES/YELP/TV ADS/ETC, I-75 IS WAY THE gently caress EAST IN GEORGIA) Phew. Triggered myself there. 
randomidiot fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Jun 11, 2022 |
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Jun 11, 2022 05:27
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I forget exactly what happened but a young woman did something to piss me off enough to flip her the bird. She responded with absolutely beaming happy smile and enthusiastic wave. That hit 100x harder than any cutting off or brake checking ever could have. Bad driver but amazing troll. My daily commute has a long stretch of 55mph 2 lane country road. I see you looking at your phone, doing 45 tops. Why do you get so mad when I pass you. I'm not a jerk about it, its done safely, and now you're 6" off my bumper and obviously livid. Wtf. Lifted trucks are by far the worst about it, but I've also had minivans decide to floor it mid pass.
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Jun 12, 2022 17:54
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It never ceases to astound when someone gets mouth-foaming-mad at the helm of a three ton car armed with a nations worth of power, climate controlled seats, automatic climate control, sound deadening, crumple zones, automatic driver's aids, active noise cancelling systems, and 97 airbags. Like hey buddy your car is nicer than most places I've lived. Life is poo poo, leave 5 minutes earlier, meditate for 5, something, eat a snickers, it'll all work out, jeez. Driving is Zen for me. I love it. I don't care what it is. I fuckin love driving and road trips. I like driving big heavy dumb stuff and that's not conducive to road rage. Go ahead, get angry, I can't. Mass wins, and I'm usually holding all the cards there. Lets not get dumb. If you're on my rear end, I'm getting out of the way as soon as its safe enough for both of us to do so. If I'm on your rear end, you need remedial driving courses for my old rear end truck weighs 7 tons and is equipped with about 100whp. With my slow old farmtruck I could go on for hours with road rage stories.
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Jun 12, 2022 20:01
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cursedshitbox posted:It never ceases to astound when someone gets mouth-foaming-mad at the helm of a three ton car armed with a nations worth of power, climate controlled seats, automatic climate control, sound deadening, crumple zones, automatic driver's aids, active noise cancelling systems, and 97 airbags. Like hey buddy your car is nicer than most places I've lived. Life is poo poo, leave 5 minutes earlier, meditate for 5, something, eat a snickers, it'll all work out, jeez. People need to understand that they absolutely do not loving matter at all at which point they'll just go with the flow and get to wherever they need to at whatever time they get there. Rushing and stressing does absolutely nothing to help, you are at the mercy of the universe so chill the gently caress out. Anyway I cycled to work for like 7 years through the city so I have had quite a few altercations with drivers just for simply existing. If you would like me to elaborate on the most memorable ones then I'm happy to do so. In the meantime I will just mention the time I was walking on a pavement and a driver beeped at me to move so he could drive across the pavement to a car park. I just stood still in front of his car. He beeped again so I just stood some more. After about 10 seconds I walked around to his passenger door, opened it and asked him what the problem was. He looked quite worried, like he didn't realise he wasn't actually safe. I told him to be patient and then walked off leaving his door open.
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Jun 13, 2022 10:59
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Olympic Mathlete posted:Anyway I cycled to work for like 7 years through the city so I have had quite a few altercations with drivers just for simply existing. If you would like me to elaborate on the most memorable ones then I'm happy to do so. Road rage is road rage, even if only one person party to it is in a car! I'm down to hear stories from cyclists, with or without a motor on their mode of transport. If the story involves being in a position of responsibility on the road and somebody in the mix got pissy enough to get confrontational, I think it's fair game. From my limited understanding of it, it seems like a lot of drivers get angry at people on bicycles. I think a few years ago a study that was reported on by all sorts of websites claimed that more than half of people behind the wheel of a car perceive people on bikes as being subhuman. That is incredibly bleak.  (I don't know anything about that study, and for all I know that could have been a mostly clickbait-driven story, but I don't like how easy it is for me to believe that it could be completely real.)People on motorcycles are generally stereotyped as being aggressive (obviously large men on Harleys the most) so I'm curious about how often they tend to get caught up in road rage incidents, either starting them or being targeted by them.
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Jun 13, 2022 20:59
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Oh drivers absolutely hate cyclists for some reason that I just do not understand as evidenced by the following stories: I work on a large campus and we've got a few big car parks off little side roads that lead to nowhere but the car parks if you're driving a car. If you're cycling or walking then the paths next to the road head on into main campus. One morning I was heading down one of these little roads and was being followed by a BMW. The road is a 10mph limit and I was going about 16mph and I hear a beep behind me, now please bear in mind that this road is a total of 80m long so in a few seconds I'd be off it. I hear a second beep behind me so I just stop in the middle of the road and ask the driver what's up. "get out of the way!" I get back in reply and that's the point I decide to make this guy feel like a loving idiot. I tell him that if he had just waited like 5 seconds he'd be where he wanted to be by now and I note he has what looks like his parents in the car and now is starting to feel stupid. This guy is going to learn about patience today because I'm early, it's a beautiful sunny day and he's a loving prick so as he's asking me to move I ask him if he realises that by being a dickhead he's just making himself later and embarrassing himself in front of his elders. I tell him I want him to say sorry for being impatient and beeping and at this point his passengers look like they just want to die, they're asking him to apologise but he's just sat there in the driver's seat fuming that I've made him look stupid. After what seems like forever, a pile of cars sat behind him beeping and his mum pleading with him he finally says sorry. I've probably been sat there 3 minutes at this point and I make him repeat it, louder. He says it louder and I decide I've had enough fun and continue on to work. Another time not far away from the above altercation we've got a 2 lane road that was constantly backed up, static traffic in the morning. On a bike you can easily weave in and out and basically ignore it which is why bikes own so hard. This morning one lane was way backed up, the other less so with a line of cars about 50m ahead sat still so I take this open lane and just cycle up it. This apparently annoys the guy in a van behind me who gets right up behind me and honks several times. He can go NOWHERE except right up the arse of a static car ahead. He will save exactly ZERO time. He's still beeping so again, I slow down and stop. This guy is screaming out of the window that he's going to kill me and steps one foot out of the van. I'm not interested in working today so I put my bike down on the ground and offer this prick out. Strangely when he realises I am actually up for a fight and is being actively called out on it he steps back inside the van. I get back on the bike and pick my way through the traffic leaving this guy to consider what a bellend he is. One time in the city centre early morning no traffic I see a car up ahead parked in a bus stop. As I start to pass it the car pulls out on me to the point where it draws level with me, I'm square to the guy and I'm able to tap on the driver's window with my hand and ask him what the gently caress he thinks he's doing. There's a red light ahead which he slows down for, I pull in front and he too wants a fight. The funniest thing about this whole thing though was what he said to me in between mouthing off "I WAS AHEAD OF YOU!" bro if you were ahead of me how was I knocking on your loving window looking right at you? So he's another that steps out of the car trying to do something so down the bike goes and I'm stood in the middle of the street waiting. As before, it's all talk and he steps back inside. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BEING IN A METAL BOX AND MOUTHING OFF AT PEOPLE IS FASCINATING TO ME, once they step outside they lose the protection and something must flip in their brain like nah I might actually get hosed up here. Navigating the ring road in town my exit has two lanes, both are empty because it's early and I take the left one, I'm not even in the middle of the lane or anything and some goon passes within a foot of me and then fires round into my lane in front screaming for me to get the gently caress out of the way as he goes. The lane goes left into a quiet street so I follow the guy right up to his apartment block car park. I ask him why he passed so close and then screamed at me for........... being on a road on a bike?! and he gets really flustered because oh poo poo now this guy that I nearly hit with my car and screamed at knows where I live. I note he has a kid's car seat in the car and ask him if he drives like that much of a maniac with the kid in there. This guy is just an out and out ringpiece though and the 'discussion' goes nowhere, he's one of these people that is never wrong and will not learn anything so I leave. There was also the time where I was cycling through the city up a one way street which leads onto a junction with a 90 degree corner. Had a guy in a car 'overtake' me on the apex and hit me with his car. I'd like to add at this point in my cycling career I was quite fit so I wasn't exactly going slow so I have no loving idea what this maniac was doing except deliberately trying to hit me. Anyway I end up on the floor and he steps out of the car and his first words are "look what you've done to my car", the second words were "I suppose you want to go to the police station?" which was maybe 100m away. All I get for this experience is a bunch of disinterested cops as I'm stood there bleeding with the guy who has just hit me with a car 3 minutes ago. A week later a cop came round my house to interview me and basically said "nah nothing will get done". My left knee and elbow haven't been the same since. Another ring road run in, another close pass, more horn, more shouting... guy driving a company vehicle and he gets caught at the lights up ahead so I roll up, open his passenger door and ask him what's up. He's clearly not all there and I leave his door open as I cycle off. Near work 2 lane road which has little islands in the middle periodically to allow people to cross safely. As I'm charging down the road I get someone wedge their car between me and one of these crossing islands to the point where I see them and have to haul on the brakes otherwise I'm going to glance off their C pillar. It is without doubt the most insanely stupid overtake I've ever seen and unfortunately I had to see it first person mode. At the roundabout up ahead they turn right which is a business park that my company owns which means they work nearby so I follow them into their work car park to ask just what the gently caress they think they were doing overtaking so dangerously. This guy just straight ignores me and pretends to be on his phone as he walks into the building as I'm telling him he could've injured me by driving like an arsehole. Shout out to his company having a staff 'who's who' page with photos which enabled me to send his boss a letter about how his employee drives like a maniac but also likes to shirk responsibility for it as I'm there telling him my front wheel was maybe 3 inches from his bumper as he tried to thread the needle. In all of these situations I was just making my way to work. I wasn't doing anything stupid and I certainly hadn't set out to piss someone off, I just existed on a bike around people who are impatient, angry dickheads who don't know what's around them and have little understanding about how to drive safely and absolutely do not accept responsibility. I have no car to car road rage experiences that are anything other than the beeping of a horn because if I see someone driving like an idiot I AVOID THEM AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE which I'm able to do because I have eyes in my arse and am constantly aware of what's around me as a driver. Thank you for listening. Olympic Mathlete fucked around with this message at 14:11 on Jun 14, 2022 |
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Jun 14, 2022 11:36
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Olympic Mathlete posted:There was also the time where I was cycling through the city up a one way street which leads onto a junction with a 90 degree corner. Had a guy in a car 'overtake' me on the apex and hit me with his car. I'd like to add at this point in my cycling career I was quite fit so I wasn't exactly going slow so I have no loving idea what this maniac was doing except deliberately trying to hit me. Anyway I end up on the floor and he steps out of the car and his first words are "look what you've done to my car", the second words were "I suppose you want to go to the police station?" which was maybe 100m away. All I get for this experience is a bunch of disinterested cops as I'm stood there bleeding with the guy who has just hit me with a car 3 minutes ago. A week later a cop came round my house to interview me and basically said "nah nothing will get done". My left knee and elbow haven't been the same since.  Which country are you from? I'm guessing not the United States based on some of the terms you're using. I think if someone got mowed down by a car while on a bike here in the US it'd become a whole thing with the insurance coverage of everyone involved, like the driver's car insurance and the cyclist's health insurance. Does insurance of any kind come into play in a case of what amounts to vehicular assault where you are? It sounds like not even a whiff of responsibility was put on the driver for causing you injuries. It's wild to me that you got really hurt and then completely brushed off even by the police. Edit: Also drat, I wish I had stones even half the weight of yours, it sounds like you're really good at standing up for yourself and schooling people. Politely Afraid! fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Jun 14, 2022 |
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Jun 14, 2022 16:11
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Olympic Mathlete posted:Oh drivers absolutely hate cyclists for some reason that I just do not understand as evidenced by the following stories: Tell me you don't live in America without telling me you don't live in America.
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Jun 16, 2022 00:02
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| # ? May 12, 2024 17:09 |
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sharkytm posted:Tell me you don't live in America without telling me you don't live in America. What gave it away as not being the US, was it the fact I was able to cycle to work through choice?  Politely Afraid! posted:Yikes to everything in your post, but extra yikes to being hit by a car, that's terrifying! UK, Middle of England specifically. You can get specific cycle insurance but most home insurance policies also have this cover these days so even though drivers here will piss and moan about cyclists paying 'road tax' like they do. They do not pay 'road tax' as that was abolished under Winston Churchill in 1937, what they pay is a vehicle excise duty based on how much pollution their car shits out (and it should be a lot more than it is). Bikes pay nothing, obviously but EVs also pay nothing despite weighing loads and helping to destroy roads. But no driver ever moans about EVs not paying a 'road tax'. Nor do they understand that like 80% of cyclists also own cars and the roads are paid for by local and general taxation so even a kid spending their money on Pokemon cards or whatever is contributing. There's just this amazing lack of knowledge in so many different areas of driving and roads which leads to confrontations. As you mentioned already cyclists are seen as an annoyance rather than something to be celebrated for a variety of reasons, we have our poo poo backwards. Olympic Mathlete fucked around with this message at 07:46 on Jun 16, 2022 |
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Jun 16, 2022 07:35
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