The browser on my iPad crashed while I was writing this, so this is going to be a lot messier than originally. I feel like I started off on the wrong foot last time I was here, but I still wanted to share this and inquire about what might have gone wrong. This happened a while ago so there are no emotions at this point.
I was hurrying to a doctor’s appt and was making my way, along with many others, to exit at a major interchange. My intention was to move in front of the gray Chevy after they had changed lanes, because there wasn’t much room behind and because they were slower than I was. The Chevy immediately moved over another spot and the old Nissan driver immediately sped up like a bat out of hell to block me out. I wasn’t aware of what was happening at the time, so I continued at my quick pace to try merging until I ran out of real estate. I decided instead of merging in front of him, to let him pass first. Instead of zooming past like a normal person, he chose to slow down next to me. I had no clue what was going on and hit the gas to get in front of him because he was wasting my time. When he finally quit his game I saw a hand go up and wondered why he would flip me off. I didn’t realize what had happened until I reviewed the footage. This is probably the most perplexing thing that has happened to me on the road.
What could I have done differently?
Why do some people feel like they own the lane they’re in? I have had and heard of many instances of people shooting like rockets when you are several hundred feet ahead. I wonder if these same people complain when no one lets them in? I am very interested in the psychology of these types.
Have you ever experienced any incidences (major or minor) of road rage that you felt were uncalled for? Share.
Happens all the time. You just need to keep your head and try to avoid situations like that. People can and will do dangerous things for a myriad of reasons.
I avoid being in a hurry get anywhere. I have found over the years that the more laid back I am about time, the fewer poor choices I make. Not that you made any poor choices, but being more chill about the guy “wasting time” may have resulted in you just slowing down more so he would finally pull ahead. It wouldn’t have been a choice you were making as consciously as just going with the guy being a clueless ass and letting him go on his way and out of yours.
I was once driving on the street near my place of employment, going just over the 30mph speed limit, when a female in a Toyota Camry began tailgating me about a foot off my rear bumper. She began flashing her lights and hitting the horn, and in the rear-view mirror I could see her shouting and gesturing. I just kept going and when I reached the intersection at the end of the street she pulled up alongside me and continued to shout abuse. I ignored her and drove off.
I’m assuming that she was unaware of the actual speed limit, and thought that I was deliberately trying to hold her up for some strange reason. Thing was, it was a straight road with a dashed center line and no opposing traffic. She could have gone around me anytime she wanted. Weird.
Did you use your turn signal? Usually when people complain of “unprovoked” road rage, it’s actually in response to something they did and didn’t realize. My brother in law does that all the time. He doesn’t pay attention to shit on the road, and if someone honks at him for cutting them off, he’s always like, “OMG, what is that guy honking for?” Not that that excuses road rage, though.
This isn’t road rage. The driver didn’t follow you, tailgate you, scream at you, flip you off. . . He did pass you on the right as you were trying to change lanes, which is obnoxious but doesn’t constitute road rage.
As for what you could have done differently: you had plenty of chances to change lanes before it became urgent. Instead, you waited until you were close to the exit, then got in a race with a guy for the bit of open space you needed to change lanes. You ended up driving much faster than the rest of the traffic, and had to slam on your brakes when you got to the exit. If you had changed lanes earlier you’d have avoided this whole mess.
I don’t see any road-rage there. In fact, it seems the problem is that you pussed-out. Once you got in-front of the white car and punched it, you should have kept punching it until you got the lane you needed. But you slowed-up at a critical point where the Fiero/RX-7 (or whatever it was) was starting to gain speed. That guy had just entered the highway and his actions were still fluid. Since he hadn’t settled into the traffic flow yet, you didn’t have sufficient data with which to draw any conclusions on how he might behave. You ended-up doing something quite dangerous because you weren’t able to accurately predict the actions of the other drivers and how those actions would interact with your plan.
Your situational awareness failed you here. It appears you dropped your guard of the traffic to the rear when you merged into the white car’s lane to punch it, and the Fiero surprised you. You should have anticipated that the Fiero was going to continue to accelerate, too. If you’re going to try to race around all that traffic, I’d appreciate it if you’d work on your traffic management and situational awareness skills. Also, you didn’t say you signaled. You did signal… didn’t you?
I cannot watch the video since I’m at work, but based on your description, I see this sort of thing ALL the time here in DC traffic, so here’s my thoughts about it.
First rule, be decisive. Particularly in heavy traffic, it’s not only irritating but but dangerous when it’s not clear what other drivers are doing. If I cannot tell what another driver is doing, it makes me wary. Sometimes people are doing unexpected things because they’re aggressive assholes, sometimes they’re distracted, sometimes they’re trying to be nice, or maybe they’re being indecisive because someone near them is and they’re not sure how to react. Regardless, if you’re intention was to go in front of the Chevy, do it, and if someone speeds up, as long as you signaled your intention and all ahead of time, it’s not like he’s going to ram you.
Speaking for my thought process, when I see people that are being indecisive, I see them as a potential hazard. I want to be able to predict what actions the drivers around me are taking, and when I see that, I want to get away from them. Sometimes I will slow down, particularly if it’s someone that I think is going to get off or I’m getting off soon, but usually I prefer to speed up and have them behind me. The logic there being that someone that is unpredictable is less dangerous behind me than in front of me.
Of course, I can’t be sure if that’s what this particular driver’s thought process is, he could have just been one of those people that HATES it when people get in front of him too.
Also, when changing lanes, plan ahead. If I’m on an interstate, I usually start thinking about exiting at least a mile ahead, regardless of whether I’m going 60 or in bumper to bumper traffic. Sometimes I even start planning farther ahead if I’m in the left lane and it’s several lanes or if I’m unfamiliar with the area. Even still, I occasionally lose track of where I am or, perhaps being unfamiliar, get caught by surprise, but this is something I can do to help avoid getting into lane change issues. It’s better to be over a little earlier than necessary and have to go a little slower than have to force my way in at the last minute. Plus, if I see someone that is being aggressive, I can simply let them go by and get behind them and not have to deal with it. So many people just seem to feel like they deserve to get as far ahead as they can before getting over, and that combined with people that hate letting people merge in front of them is a major contributor to a lot of traffic jams.
Some people are possessive or entitled assholes, or maybe they have a good reason for it and it just looks like way. I don’t blame people so much for not letting people merge who clearly had opportunities earlier, bypassed them, then try to force their way in. It’s basic human nature. If you were waiting in line and someone just walked ahead and tried to push their way in, you’d probably be upset too, just in normal face-to-face interactions, people are far less likely to do that. It doesn’t make it right, but it does make it understandable.
In fact, I’ve run some experiments out of curiosity when I’m driving in moderate traffic. Sometimes, if there’s a long line of people trying to merge in, I’ll leave several car lengths of space ahead of me early on and see just how many people bypass that space, then I watch the people that bypass it and see how much farther up they go, often they’ll bypass that, fly to the end of the merge lane, and be trying to force their way in maybe just one or two cars in front of me. It just creates unnecessary frustration for everyone. The unfortunate results of these experiments, though clearly not scientifically rigorous, is that very few people merge when is reasonable, an overwhelming majority will go to the end or very near the end and force their way in, rather than merge where there’s space.
Admittedly, I don’t always merge in the first space I see, and generally one shouldn’t, but I’ll never wait until the end unless there just wasn’t any natural merge spot sooner. But one thing I have noticed is that, if I keep my eye out, there’s usually at least one person that is deliberately leaving enough space for cars to merge sooner than the end, I take advantage of it, wave to them, and when I’m in that situation, I do the same. I hope that, even if it doesn’t have much meaningful effect in alleviating the traffic, it at least helps with the stress of it and minimizes these sorts of situations.
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3. Have you ever experienced any incidences (major or minor) of road rage that you felt were uncalled for? Share.
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As others said, I wouldn’t call this road rage. Someone honking or being upset is just a normal human reaction. Hell, sometimes honking is the appropriate action if someone isn’t aware that you’re there, is drifting lanes because they’re distracted, or is otherwise unaware of something or driving dangerously. Road rage is when it goes above and beyond, and it usually requires some sort of incident and some escalation. To this end, when I see an aggressive driver, I usually treat them like any other potentially dangerous driver I see on the road and I take action to distance myself from them. Other times, they don’t become aggressive until after they feel slighted, because I changed lanes in front of them or didn’t go immediately when the light turned green, or I’m going too slow for them or whatever.
Regardless, I see this sort of stuff often. Perhaps I get in front of someone, they take offense, and they’ll quickly change lanes, speed past, then get in front of me. In general, the best way to handle this sort of stuff is to just let it go. In most cases, if you let them win or get their revenge or whatever, they’ll move on. If they cut me off in retaliation, honking is a bad idea because, first, it’s not like they weren’t aware they were doing it, so there’s no safety reason, but it also is a sign of aggression and it might encourage them. So, I just let them do it, probably mutter an insult at them they can’t hear, and let it go.
I have had situations where people actually do more than that, like I’ve been run off the road a few times and wasn’t even sure why they were upset with me, but it was clearly deliberate. But again, it’s just them getting revenge for some perceived slight, and I was angry about it, but what the hell could I have done that would have improved the situation other than just letting it go? There’s nothing to be gained by pursuing it further. So in the few cases I remember of that, I just slowed down and let them get far enough ahead that I wouldn’t have to deal with them again.
The worst case I had was one where someone ran a light and cut me off in the process so, naturally, I honked at him as he was doing it. He immediately slammed on the brakes, got out of the car and pulled a bat out of his trunk. He came up to the car waving it around, but as I didn’t even get out of the car and showed no interest in engaging him because, seriously, who the hell is going to start swinging a bat into a car in broad daylight in traffic? Of course, my then fiancee who was with me was scared, but if I’d actually thought he was going to do anything other than posture, I would have taken him out.
Regardless, in all these situations, the appropriate response is to disengage and deescalate as soon as you’re aware it’s happening. Sure, there’s the occasional situation where someone gets cut off and they just go nuts right away, but that’s just extremely unlikely to happen and you can’t predict that any more than really any other sort of out-of-proportion violence one might see in other situations.
I’ve driven 25 years in 20th-century Northern California and 20 years in Thailand, mostly 21st century; I found the former to be relaxing and the latter often scary. But Thai driving has improved considerably in recent years while the driving in OP’s YouTube seems scary (though not the driver OP complains of :smack: ). What state was it?
OP: You were late to a doctor’s appointment. Have you tried to estimate how many seconds you would have lost by slowing down and making an earlier, more sedate lane change?
In the Bay Area they are called dive bombers. On the freeways they seem to be primarily carpoolers who stay in the carpool lane until the last possible second and then expect everyone in the jammed non-carpool lanes to make space for them.
Even on city streets there are some people who stay in the left lane (which may or may not be faster) until the last possible moment, then try to push into the right lane to get on a ramp or turn. I’ve never understood why they can’t just get in the proper lane to start with - since all left turns are on arrows, there is no way they’d not be able to get into their exit lane when entering the road.
I hesitate to even start on the eternal bad driving commentary, a never ending topic, now with video.
I’m pretty sure why a lot of bad driving happens. It’s about time, and a deep hatred of all other drivers who’s only purpose on the road is to get in the way of the most important person on the road, which would be almost every bad driver in the Universe. Every last day you will see somebody doing something rude, stupid, dangerous and often illegal, just to save a single second of their precious time. The video in this topic is actual evidence of just how somebody will take chances, and almost cause an accident, just to save a few seconds. That it’s a doctors appointment is just ironic, considering how long the wait there might actually be.
Everything good and valid has already been said, but even so, complaining about OTHER people is common, looking at our own behavior, quite rare.
It looked to me like you hit your turn signal, he fell back, you didn’t move over, you slowed down, he fell back further, you didn’t move over, you slowed down more, so he said “I don’t know what the hell this person is trying to do but I’ve tried to be accommodating, now it’s time to pass and I’m going to do that as quickly as possible so I’m in their blind spot for the absolute shortest amount of time possible and they can figure it out while I drive at an appropriate freeway speed in front of them.”