Incident with violent, racist driver

Hey all,
I just had an incident coming home from a Nats game with a driver and wanted to find out what you all would have done.

I got in a cab at Nats Park and was sitting in the back reading my email. I wasn’t paying too much attention, but the driver did something that really upset another driver, the second driver really blasted his horn and got on our tail.

The cab driver is black (Sudanese), I’m white we are in DC, where I live. The driver and his three companions are white and have Virginia tags. This is relevant in a minute.

The upset driver pulls up alongside us and starts yelling "fuck you, you fucking n-word, go back to your own country you fucking monkey and so on. He’s clearly drunk and yelling so much I can see foam on his lips.

The cab driver, unwisely, in my opinion, engaged with this lunatic. He said, very calmly, “you need help, calm down, why are you so angry, you have a small mind.” This really set the guy off and he got in front of us and slammed on his brakes, swerved really sharply between lanes and just drove like an all around lunatic.

What would you have done?

Here’s what I did:

I held my phone up and started taking pictures, when he was alongside us yelling crazy shit, I tried to shoot video, but iphone is really a crap and takes too long to start working. As soon as I did that, the other people in the car tried to calm the driver and it slowed down, letting us get through an intersection

Nice. A variation on the old I’m… writing… down… your… license… number gambit.

Maybe they were Giants fans. :slight_smile: Or just redneck assholes…

Did you manage to get a shot of his plate?

No, they were Nats fans, the driver had a 'Skins hat, the guy in the back had a camo Nats hat and the woman was wearing a Nats shirt.

I got a picture but I don’t think the license plate will be clear. Besides, it’s over. When it was happening, I was hoping for something Tosh.0 worthy.

Fucking Virginia. We really need to build a wall or something to keep those maniacs on their side of the river.

Yeah I was talking to the driver he said he lives in Virginia and couldn’t handle living in DC. I said I grew up in VA and couldn’t handle living there again, he asked why and I said, "my high school was filled with guys like that.

My husband once got into a screaming match with with another driver as we were leaving a parking lot. This was before cell phones, but I was scared to death and was trying like hell to calm my husband down.

It still gives me shivers to think about.

I’m glad nobody was hurt.

You misspelled Dodgers.

Anyway, thank og for diversity. Can you imagine a world where everyone was just like the driver of the nutmobile? We’d all need armored vehicles to go to ball games.

Still don’t understand the relevance of the car having VA plates. Pretty common in DC to see cars with VA plates.

The driver was clearly drunk?

Why the hell weren’t you on the phone to 911 instead of taking pictures?

Was 911 not an option? Do cab drivers have dispatch notify police about drivers like this?

The OP called them “violent”. What evidence is there of that?

Well, jtur88, he was screaming threats like “I’m going to fucking kick your ass”, swerving violently between lanes and slamming on his brakes in front of us. I call intentionally engaging in behavior that could cause bodily injury being.

To be honest, in DC, it wouldn’t really occurr to me to call 911 unless it escalated further. 911 is pretty screwed up in the city, it’s not uncommon to get put on hold when you call it. I wanted to take an action that quickly de-escalated the situation, which pulling out my camera phone did.

John Mace, I think the Virginia plates are relevant because the Nats pull a lot of their fan base from Virginia. On the weekends people are coming into the city from pretty far out like Stafford and further south. Most of the people who come in just want to havea good time, but as with a hip hop concert, there are always a few bad elements in the crowd. I mention the VA tags because it helps explain who I was dealing with, and what their cultural background was. Culture doesn’t determine if a person is bad, or good, but how they are bad or good.

Clearly the VA driver was a drunk, racist asshole. The OP’s solution was excellent. But I can’t bring myself to side with cab drivers, especially DC cab drivers. Worst drivers on the planet. Whie you weren’t looking, he’d probably cut across three lanes without looking, stopped dead in in the middle of South Capital and then pulled a U-turn to go the wrong way down a one-way. Doesn’t justify the racist comments of course but somebody needs to yell at DC cab drivers.

And I dont’ think we need to make generalizations about Virginians. How about we generalize about baseball fans instead?

That’s not violence. They did not harm anyone, nor set out to do any harm, and they kept their behavior under sufficient control that nobody was harmed inadvertently, nor any damage to property.

Your definition may vary, but in my view, Violence requires at a minimum, some quantifiable harm coming to someone’s person or property, and not just “hurting somebody’s feelings”.

Actually, the worst drivers on the road in DC are those sky blue Barwood taxis from Montgomery County.

Like I said, I was checking my email, but I think what the cab driver did was basically get over a lane when it was a little close. It’s the kind of thing you do driving in the city.

I grew up in VA and I know those guys. They city and black people scare them and they compensate by lashing out. When I was in high school, I knew guys who would go to DC, yell “n*****!” out the window at black people and speed off. That’s not all Virginiains, but there is a strong vibe of anti-black/anti-DC from some Virginians.

Yeah, I grew up in Virginia too. I live in Virginia now and driver plenty in DC. I’d rather not be painted as a spitting, drunken racist because you saw one guy in a car from Virginia shout some racist stuff. The behavior you describe seems far more typical of sports fans, in my experience, than of any state or race.

I’m a DC cab driver and a sports fan, and I’d rather not be painted as a bad driver or a spitting, drunken racist. That all sounds like the behaviour of some other group.

For the cabbie to have engaged in any way, shape or form, risked the customer’s (the OP’s) safety. I’d report that to the cab company as VERY inappropriate, and also post feedback to any cab service rating sites like Yelp or TripAdvisor or whatever there may be.

If the cabbie is alone and driving his personal car then he has more of a right to reply calmly as in the OP, but even alone in his cab he represents the cab company and that company needs to know they have a driver with poor judgment.

But, with a fare in his cab? The driver put the fare at risk with that behavior - no matter how “calm” his reply was.