Are freeway shootings really on the rise??? I live in L.A., and, yeah, you hear about them. But one of the last times the local media were waxing hysterical on the issue, it turned out that statistically there weren’t anymore than the usual. It’s just that it was the bandwagon that they decided to jump on that particular week. Then, that feeds on itself.
I’ve spent nearly 50 years of my life driving the freeways (just about all of them), so I’ve seen a lot. But not a single shooting or even a brandishing. Flip offs? Yeah, a ton. Road rage has been happening for a long time, but it’s not something I think about or worry about.
Have I been scared? Heck, yeah. Probably the scariest was when one car all of a sudden lost control and swerved across all four lanes of traffice at speed on the 405 near Costa Mesa. Didn’t hit a thing. Kind of miraculous considering how many cars there were in the immediate area. Kept my blood pressure high all the way to Irvine.
Every time you drive you are putting others at risk. Like, in a big real substantial way. I don’t think you have a substantially greater moral responsibility to drive carefully just because you have passengers in the car.
We, as humans, have a difficult time calculating risk. Shootings in that area could be up 500% and it still would be a negligible risk to the average person.
Pretty much that is it. Driving is a behavior with risks, but we take those risks and subject our children to them because of the benefits being much larger than the risks. Taking additional risk, even small ones, when driving for no added benefit? (To somehow punish the asshole?) Subjecting others (not only the child in the car) to that additional risk too, for no benefit to them? You’ll usually get away with it, but not everyone always does.
How many kids are killed by stray dogs in America each year? The wiki list for 2020 lists one that might have been a stray and the others mostly by the family dog. Still, if I was outside with a six year old under my care and there was an unknown stray nearby, I would stop the six year old from running up to try to pet the animal. Non-zero risk to no real benefit. But owning a dog had enough benefit, to me and my children, that I was willing to take the risks.
And I have no idea nor concern what many of the people posting in this thread have previously thought of me. Oh there are two or three who I respect enough (and you sir are one of them) that their reacting negatively to my posts in this thread would or do make me actually lose some respect for them. The rest? Nah. Don’t care. Either already think little of them or more so never think of them at all. My peak “reputation” here and $2.10 will get me a cup of coffee.
OTOH being a despicable contrarian has provided my life with great value since I was small. Unlike many here I am not and never have been “gifted”; I have done well intellectually and professionally by “habits of mind” instead. For me a key habit of mind is a pathological skepticism of any groupthink; i.e. considering the contrarian position seriously instead of jumping on wagons. That has always been how I learn, not by memorizing correct thoughts.
Posters in this thread fed a misogynistic troll by taking the bait, and are invested in defending drivers flipping off other drivers for perceived offenses as a risk-free harmless thing to do, despite the fact that road rage is a very real thing and that deaths from road rage episodes are not infrequent and are increasing dramatically over time. (Citation already provided.)
I’m sorry but those who would call me a “rape-enabler” based on this thread having a negative opinion of me is something I am fine with. Their respect I don’t want.
No, in the absence of a murder of a child, debating the relative responsibility of inciting harm on yourself or elevated responsibility as a parent is an interesting intellectual discussion. In the presence of a murder of a child, it’s unbelievably out of place.
If the mom had cheated and the husband divorced her and cut her off financially- interesting debate.
If the mom had cheated and the husband killed her- no debate at all.
Plus, the “taking the OP’s bait” is a distraction, and frankly, another version of victim blaming!
Oh yeah? Then what about this documentary footage?
(Also, the phrase “there weren’t anymore than the usual” doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.)
Once had someone on the Washington Beltway realize they were about to miss their exit and cut across three lanes to get to it without looking, right in front of us. That was a close one. We were too scared to honk, frankly - not because of road rage but because we’d almost had a massive wreck.
My car’s horn stopped working, I got it fixed, it cut out again after a week.
I swear it was the work of a guardian angel, because I did so love reminding other drivers of what idiots they’re being. So I used that horn a lot, and even considered hooking up a louder one (maybe a “Dual Trumpets Super Loud Horn Truck Boat Train”. …for my Horn Truck Boat Train).
My kids were convinced that it was only a matter of time til my horn, followed by my mouth, got me road-raged.
So I took the dead horn as a dare, to see if I could ignore other drivers (since I didn’t have a horn anyways). I started out pounding on the middle of the steering wheel and cursing with the windows up, but eventually learned to just shake my head and say ‘Man, what a jackass, he’ll get some karma one of these days… but he’s not my problem.’
I swear, I took ten points off my blood pressure… oh, and no one’s pulled me out of the car and stabbed me (which would be totally on the shiv-weilder, but I’d be the one bleeding in the gutter, with my kids laughing at me: “Told you so! You owe us double allowances!”)
Well, it certainly can be an escalation, but more to the point, it often can be perceived that way. I’m sure I’m not the only person who has employed my horn in a completely legitimate circumstance, only to have the recipient of my gentle driving correction give me the finger. Given that the world is teeming with hair trigger psychopaths just itching to shoot someone over a minor driving infraction, can you really take the risk that any use of your horn could result in a violent, armed confrontation? And if you choose to take that risk, do you not bear some of the responsibility for what happens as a result?
Yes, I’ve had that happen, where I was nearly side-swiped by someone driving recklessly. I honked one brief honk so that they were aware I was there because I assumed they hadn’t seen me or they wouldn’t have done that. I got the finger.
I’ve also honked my horn on a couple of occasions where I’m in an intersection at a light behind someone who has clearly fallen asleep. I mean that literally. After waiting a while when the light turns green I give a quick honk and I can see the person startled awake. Followed by the finger (because how dare I interrupt their road nap?) and they drive off. That has happened to me twice when it should never happen to anyone ever.
(In case anyone is wondering I have yet to shoot anyone.)
Someone needs to invent (and get car companies to offer) a dual-horn. Press one side for a friendly tootle-oo sound, press the other for A I R H O R N !
See, that would terrify me. I would be afraid that a piece of a mountain or an Acme brand anvil was about to fall on my head. Or, even worse, that I was standing in the air about to plummet into a really deep canyon - and I live on the prairie.
I still disagree. While you are calling flipping somebody off road rage, I feel that flipping somebody off is not a step in the chain that leads to getting shot. This was not a situation that escalated. This was an unfortunate parent and child who had a random encounter with a dangerous lunatic.
Because the shooter is a dangerous lunatic, you cannot attribute anything that the victims did to having been the cause of the incident. The shooter may have shot at them because he got flipped off. But he could just as randomly shot at somebody because they were driving a sports car or wearing a t-shirt for a sports team he didn’t like. Just because you trigger somebody else’s insanity doesn’t mean you are to blame for their insanity.
I don’t think you’ve ruined your reputation, but your arguments definitely come off as blaming the victim to me. Sure, you say you don’t want to blame the mother, but then make an argument that would make her partially to blame. You claim that it is a teachable moment, and give reasons why one should not flip someone off in the situation the mother was in. That is in effect blaming her.
You can more easily tell with the two examples you gave. People do in fact blame the victim in both scenarios. Someone who ostentatiously displays their wealth with easily removable items in an area known for thievery is very often partially blamed for the resulting theft. And of course the pedestrian who didn’t actually look both ways is considered partially at fault: even I can’t disagree with that one. They could get wind up hurt even if the driver was not at fault.
Both of those are situations where the consequences are foreseeable. But flipping someone off does not reasonably lead to someone shooting at you. In the time it took me to compose this post, I’m sure at least hundreds of people have flipped people off in their car without being shot at. And I’m not sure I’m not off by orders of magnitude.
Our country would have to degenerate much, much further before I would ever think that someone shooting at you was a foreseeable consequence to flipping someone off for cutting you off in traffic, or really any other situation except when someone is actually brandishing a gun.
Like @LittleNemo, I do not see what the mother did as having any bearing on the shooting at all. Someone who would shoot her for that would do so for her simply driving in a way they didn’t approve of. It just is not reasonable to use this as a reason that someone should never flip someone off.
And I say that as someone who can count on one hand the number of times he has flipped anyone off in a non-joking manner.
