If you were genuinely frightened that a guy who hit your vehicle with a stick because you shoved him with your vehicle might escalate his retaliation, you might open your door to shove him off balance and then shut the door and drive away. You wouldn’t stop and get out of the vehicle and approach him.
Pretending that the driver had a legitimate self-defense reason for exiting his vehicle to beat up the traffic-blocker is just rationalizing road rage. You shouldn’t be shoving people with your vehicle, no matter how frustrated you are at their illegal blocking of traffic.
After the driver showed he was violent and shoved the man with his vehicle, which is a far deadlier weapon than a stick.
Even if the road-ragey driver felt endangered because the man he pushed with his vehicle retaliated by hitting his vehicle with a stick, exiting his vehicle to beat the guy up was definitely violence on a whim rather than rational self-defense.
Shoving people with your vehicle is assault. You may be sitting behind the wheel in a padded seat feeling like the vehicle is just an extension of your body so you get to push people with it, but it’s a violent and dangerous thing to do.
I missed the part of the story where it was known ahead of time the person demonstrating violence was unarmed.
There’s no pretending here. he had every right to subdue someone who demonstrated use of a weapon. There’s simply no way of knowing what the wackjob was going to do or what weapons he possessed. All the driver knew is that he was a screaming loon who demonstrated a violent act with a weapon.
As has been pointed out already, exiting your vehicle to beat someone up is even stupider if the person is armed. The driver’s getting out to beat up the guy makes zero sense except as some kind of violent road-rage revenge fantasy.
Who in turn had every right to defend himself against someone who had assaulted him with a vehicle, of course.
:dubious: “All”? Gosh, you mean the driver had already forgotten that he’d assaulted the guy with his vehicle? That’s one forgetful driver.
If I see a traffic-blocking protestor holding a stick, I don’t run into them with my vehicle. If I did, it would not be particularly surprising, much less “crazy”, if they retaliated by hitting my vehicle with the stick.
If I see traffic-blocking protestors, I mutter some unkind words and wait for the road to be clear again, either by the protestors’ spontaneously withdrawing from the road or by law enforcement removing them. I don’t get so “royally pissed off” that I assault the protestors by driving my vehicle into them.
Well, not being a pants-wetting paranoid scaredy-cat like so many superficially “tough guy” types, I don’t actually require a situation to be formally certified as totally non-threatening in order to refrain from losing my head and committing assault by deliberately driving my vehicle into traffic-blocking protestors.
The article, dated 11/23/2019, says the video “surfaced” “yesterday.” Yet the only protests I could find that happened Friday was one in Iran and the ongoing Hong Kong protests. S
The deeply biased website says “this is likely” an Antifa protestor. Based on…?
So what we’ve got is a man who may or may not be Antifa at what may or may not be a protest that apparently didn’t happen last Friday as reported by a deeply biased website. That certainly is worthy of :rolleyes:
Well, I’d say that having the elementary common sense and self-control to refrain from going into a road-rage meltdown and deliberately driving a vehicle into protestors blocking traffic doesn’t really count as “luck”. Whether or not they happen to be wearing masks or holding sticks.
ETA: Blocking traffic may not be an excuse for assault, but it was the reason for assault. People can choose to learn from this miserable idiot’s mistake, or they can not. It’s your / their choice.
Not surprising. I thought there was a more detailed summary posted upthread, but if nobody actually has a reliable account of what happened, then the argument is basically moot.
IDGAF either, but you shouldn’t deliberately run into people with your vehicle even if they are blocking roads.
What the hell is the problem with people who think that illegal blocking of roads somehow justifies deliberately running a vehicle into pedestrians? Your being inconvenienced in your use of the public highways does not make it okay for you to deliberately risk killing or maiming people.