And these are the fun things about our roads; we all share them.
I’m not one for violence or road-rage but there’s a certain sense of balance when nobody feels safe. The lower on the food chain someone might be, the less he’s inclined to follow the rules, your rules.
Actually, this particular gesture does not mean “please pass”, it means “fuck you!” No wonder he wanted to punch your lights out. If I were you, I’d have your girl put her hands in her pockets when she’s riding with you, or next time you might find a bullet whizzing through your window instead of someone pulling in front of you. I mean, duh. Someone gives an obscene gesture and is surprised that the other party is pissed off? When they’ve already shown that they’re complete idiots? What a shocker.
The one and only time in my life I flipped off a driver it was some David Duke looking motherfucker who almost ran me and my bike off a country road in Orangeburg County, South Carolina and into a ditch. SURE I FLIPPED HIM OFF. I also screamed, “Dumbass motherfucker!” at the top of my lungs. Might have been “Bitch-ass dumbass motherfucker!” In any event, this was his reaction:
He stopped the car some twenty or thirty yards ahead.
Put her in reverse.
Parked in the road, blocking traffic on both sides, and jumped out screaming and shaking his fists.
HE almost ran INTO ME off the fucking road IN A CAR and he’s SCREAMING at ME for flipping him the BIRD on my BIKE?
Insane.
We screamed at each other for awhile until other drivers honking their horns got him to get back in his car. Asshole was LUCKY I’d been riding for two hours – I wasn’t sure I had the stamina for a long fistfight if I couldn’t drop him on the first punch. If he had put one finger on me I’d have done my best to beat him basically blue.
You seem to equate “the bird” with armed conflict.
People drive. People get angry while driving. Anger leads to fist waving, yelling swear words, and general consternation and constipation.
Physical violence, be it fisticuffs or actual exchanges of gunfire. Belong on a different field of human interaction. If people can’t be civilized enough to avoid the 100,000 year old instinct to “have the last word”, “not take shit from nobody, nohow” and always one-up the other guy, thats not the fault of the person who gave the bird. Let us not forget that this prick was tailgating and being a Class 1 Asshole to begin with.
That being said. The bird-giver should bear in mind that some people are psycopaths and could be armed, therefore one might consider only flipping said bird whilst simultaneously accellerating at a rate sufficient to create a considerable distance between the humans and said psychopaths, thus rendering more difficult the task of aiming and discharging firearms from a moving vehicle.
Wouldn’t it be a nicer world if when people did get angry at each other, the worst that happened was they yelled at each other, and maybe said a couple swear words, and then it was over? Maybe not ideal, but at least nobody would end up injured or dead. But no, it seems like it’s always got to end with, “Og mad - Og smash!!!”
Oh I know it was a dumb move and pretty assholish, in general I don’t flip people off except in the most extreme of circumstances and I let my friend know this, but it doesn’t change the argument that there is something seriously wrong with trying to turn a shouting match into a boxing match.
It would be nice, yes. 
Can’t we all just get along? 
Unless like me, a person has serious back problems and it’s agonizing PAINFUL to hit a speedbump at the wrong speed or angle.
It HURTS, and I’m going to creep over them carefully so as not to jar a back that all too often decides that any little excuse (like a speed bump gone over a bit too carelessly) is a good reason to cause instant and excrutiating pain.
NOT that your apartment dude had that as his excuse, I’m just saying that yeah, there are reasons the person in front of you isn’t moving at a pace that’s to your taste, and it’s not that they’re trying to hold you up.
In all areas other than approaching potholes, speed bumps and other road hazards that would cause undue jarring, I’m a speed demon as much as I can legally get away with. In the case of speed bumps, or those ravine like dips in parking lots for instance? I’m very careful, and have had my fair share of annoyed and “move it bub” tailgaters behind me. Unlike your apartment dude though, I pretty much ignore them.
If I do end up face to face with them? I’ve found that ever so sweet explaining of this problem, usually makes them feel worse than a “fuck off” type confrontation such as the OP. Particularly if I end up in the store and pretend I don’t know that it was them that was all annoyed and tailgating me. A sigh and “gee, some people are so lucky, I don’t blame them, they can’t help it, they just don’t know that others may be injured…blah blah, much sweet little old lady guilt producing crap”
Works wonders, to the point of sheepish blushes being produced on the “victim’s” face even. 
I MUCH prefer that sort of “confrontation”, it’s so satisfying and the opponent rarely has any way of rebutting it, particularly if one does the “well YOU’RE so nice, YOU wouldn’t be like that horrible mean person in the parking lot” kind of approach.
Wow, scary.
I had a similar incident:
Driving home from Tarrytown at 3 AM one Saturday night. I pull over at a rest area to get some coffee, and there’s about a million spots. I pull into one, noticing some guy parked in his truck, kind of in the driving lane in the lot.
Well, no sooner do I get out of my little car when the guy comes flying out of his truck, screaming and ranting and raving about how I took his spot. I look around at all the spots - literally, there are three cars in the lot, mine his, and one other’s. But it’s 3 AM and I am alone and female and scared, so I just agree, “Yes, sir. You’re right, sir. I’m sorry, sir.” And finally after getting his fill of yelling at me, he leaves.
I was petrified. Even if I had taken the only spot left, which I didn’t, does it make him feel good to yell at a 25-year old young woman? (how old I was at the time). I was at a rest area. Fer chrissakes.
I’m gonna wager a guess that the guy doesn’t have that problem. He looked about 25 and was spry enough to hop right on out of his car and start yelling.
At any rate, I enjoy confrontation when I’m in a bad mood, and I was in a bad mood that day. Like I said, that’s why I really want to get some mace and a stun gun.
I’m a “bring it on” type of gal, and I’d love nothing more than to knock that asshole to his knees for threatening me. Then I’d simply drive around and call the police to report him for threatening me and leaving me no choice but to stun/mace him.
I have two anecdotes from driving in suburban St. Louis which illustrate that there are some crazy motherfuckers driving around in suburban St. Louis, so I have never been one to do a lot of flipping off of others and such.
I was once on my way home from work, driving my mother’s crappy “mid-size” Pontiac. I was at an intersection, turning left. To the right, the road rose quickly to a small hill. I started pulling out, but the road was slick and my mom’s car’s front wheels didn’t catch traction. As I was sluggishly making it halfway into the intersection, a car came very quickly over the hill. Since I was halfway out, I had to keep going, and finally got traction. By that time, the other car was up on my ass, honking and riding close. I only had to go a little way before I turned into a subdivision, heading home. The woman behind me follows me in and does a TV stunt move flying past and in front of me, where she cuts me off with her car at an angle. She jumps out and starts yelling at me, apparently under the belief that I pulled out in front of her. She alleges that her child hit his head on the back seat when she had to stop, and blames me for this. I was a bit dumbfounded, and many questions occurred to me (as in “If you have a child in the car do you think you should be pulling stunts like you just did or accosting strange teenagers?”) All I did ask was “How fast were you going?” This pissed her off no end, such that she grabbed my door handle, yanked the door open and kicked me in the thigh. She then made a point of noting my license plate, saying that her boyfriend was a cop, and he would come beat me up.
Several years later, I was on the way home from another job, driving along a section of road that had two lanes going in the direction I was, but heading for the point at which they merged to one. I’m not sure why, but the guy next to me must have been pissed at me for something, because he wasn’t letting me get over. I had no problem slowing down, so I did so, at which time he slowed to block me, I sped up a little, and he did so as well. Back then I had a Camaro Z28, so I thought, “Fine” and slowed to a crawl. I figured that either he would let me get in behind him at that point, or I would easily accelerate to get in front of him. He indeed was a big enough dick not to let me in, so I easily sped up faster than he to get in front of him before the merge. Two intersections later, he pulled up beside me to start cursing me out. I simply rolled up the passenger side window, at which time he pulled a gun out to point at me. As earlier, it was no sweat to let him get in front of me. He could have done so far sooner, without committing additional crimes.
Wow, I hated St. Louis.
And if you have no choice in the matter? This is why I fully support concealed weapon carry laws. It’s not that I’m going to pick a fight and flash a piece if someone cuts me off (FAR…, FAR from it), but if I accidentally cut someone off, they’ll think twice about trying to get out with a bat not knowing whether I’m packing or not. You don’t have to flash the finger to incite some of these assholes.
These are reasons why I oppose concealed carry laws. The presence of crazy assholes is a good reason for having fewer guns available to people, not more. What if I had had a weapon to pull when the other guy brandished a gun at me? The chances of someone firing off a round would have gone up markedly.
Well if a crazy man is insisting on killing me regardless, I’d rather have something to at least try and protect myself. I have only one life, I intend to live it.
From your previous Wrote a thread about it, too just wanted to confirm. The on-ramp that you talk about, on which this guy attempted to pass you, was it a single lane ramp or a two lane ramp? I have been on 2 lane on ramps, and people passing me on the right is quite common. It seems to me, and as you also mention it, while looking at the freeway traffic, you moved a little too much into the lane right of yours, and this guy was there passing you in that lane had to move right to avoid you. If that were true, his anger was not all that unjustified though even that does not account for road rage and does not give reason to threaten anyone with physical assault.
Neither of us had guns (to my knowledge) so we can save that debate for another thread, I think. :dubious:
I completely understand that violence isn’t the answer. What I don’t understand is how you can justify the same thing when defending your life is in order.
But you’re right. It stops here, at least on my part. If anyone wants to debate this, you know what to do. 
I don’t understand why Ooner felt the need to slow down. I am not condoning the desire to fight by the other driver, but why not just keep driving as you were?
I remember how my dad once addressed a very similar situation, way back when.
He was driving the family (Mom, my younger brother, myself) to Pittsburgh one Saturday for our weekly visit with my dad’s parents–a forty-mile trip, more or less. Along one stretch of rural Pennsylvania road, some fellow in an intensely filthy mustard-yellow pickup truck apparently decided that my dad had cut him off somehow, or prevented him from passing, or trespassed on his mating territory, or who knows. Of course, since we had managed to throw off this guy’s schedule irrevocably, he decided that there was no other alternative but to follow us, screaming obscenities and swerving dangerously close to our car. This was back before the cellular revolution, so Dad simply kicked the car’s speed up a notch, trusting that Chuckles would eventually get bored and fade away. Instead, Chuckles interpreted this maneuver as an additional challenge to his manhood, and retaliated by attempting to run our car off the road.
At this point Dad changed tactics, and pulled over to the curb. Pickup Guy pulled over as well, several yards in front of us, and leaped out of the cab with a long metal object–yikes!–opps, false alarm, just a tire iron. So the guy, who looked like some sort of undernourished Dan Hagerty, dashed up to our car, still screaming unintelligibly, and took a swing at the driver’s side door.
The rest of the family, myself included, were completely petrified at this point. My dad was not a physically well man by any standards, having suffered from post-polio syndrome for his entire adult life, and though I loved and respected him dearly I harbored no illusions about how he would fare in a brawl. This, however, was never Dad’s intention. His entire goal by pulling over was merely to get Chuckles to step out of his own vehicle.
As the guy pulled the tire iron back for another swing at the car, Dad shifted into reverse and stepped on the gas, spraying gravel as our car leaped back about twenty yards. Then Dad, who among his other hobbies was an amateur drag racer, shifted back into drive, and slammed on the gas again. The car roared forward directly at the other guy, screeching to a halt at precisely nineteen yards. Chuckles screeched, tripped over his own feet and fell over backwards.
Dad shifted and backed the car up again ten yards. At this point Chuckles forgot all about both his manhood and his tire iron, leaped up and made a dash for his truck, and was out of sight in about fifteen seconds.
During all this, Dad had managed to also note down the license number of the other guy’s truck, and was able to get the police after his ass. I think Dad’s favorite part of the whole sordid affair was probably forcing the other guy to pay for an entirely new paint job, because of the dent he put in Dad’s car door.
I was going the same speed, 5 over the speed limit in the right lane, but instead of passing me the guy chose to tail my car closely, which I’m not comfortable with. I consider slowing down when people are up on your ass to be a pretty good indicator of “get off my ass and go around because I’m not speeding up for you”