On the way home today, I saw this car in front of me that was just stopped in the middle of the road. The driver was evidently on his phone. After sitting there for a few minutes with cars queueing behind me, I joined the people behind me in honking at the car. That’s when things got interesting 😉
The driver of the stopped car first opened his window to flip everyone off and gestured indicating to go around him (in the center turn lane). But, as I came up almost parallel to his car, the driver suddenly opened his door and proceeded to walk right up to the front of my car. He stood there for a few minutes shouting some four letter words I couldn’t hear (thanks, door seals!), while I focused on his forehead in an effort to avoid eye contact. Luckily, I was wearing sunglasses with mirror lenses. Eventually, he got back into his car and turned at the nearest intersection without further incident.
I’m not sure if honking at the driver was a good idea, but on the other hand, not honking feels a bit like appeasement towards road ragers. Also, the fact that I’m even having this thought seems like a result of hindsight bias. Actually, I don’t know if appeasement is even a good analogy for this situation; it implies that there’s an us-versus-them (“normal-people-vs-road-ragers”) dichotomy here, which I think there isn’t. After all, at the end of the day, road ragers are humans just like you and me.
In retrospect, I think I should have called 911, written down the car’s plate number, and/or had a dashcam… but at least I got away without any damage to my car or myself. I feel pretty lucky that the situation deescalated quickly – I’ve heard of lots of stories in my area where road ragers ended up pulling weapons on other people. 😬
Let’s try to be nice to each other, but also prepared for someone who isn’t so nice.