# When should a person have the right to drive thru a crowd of demonstrators? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 3, 2018, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-should-a-person-have-the-right-to-drive-thru-a-crowd-of-demonstrators/811732 "2018-04-03T17:20:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 345
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2018, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-should-a-person-have-the-right-to-drive-thru-a-crowd-of-demonstrators/811732/345 "2018-04-06T15:58:51Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Are you using the bat at less than 1 mph to push people out of the way, are they actively blocking you, and do you have the right of way? They are a crowd of people, jaywalkers in this instance. Say they want to get to a football game. They are in the intersection against the light. I come at them with a bat, swinging it back and forth, approaching at 1mph, yelling at them to get out of my way. > [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > Anyways, this is probably the last thing I’ll say on this particular subject (for a couple of reasons: 1 - it feels a bit like continuing to pick on eschereal’s mistake, and I try not to do that once someone has acknowledged their error, and 2 - I doubt I’m going to win any hearts / minds on this point, especially with someone that thinks satirists are “liars”) That’s fine. Just saying that being fooled by satire is not the same as what you are claiming here. And I do not see how satire is not a lie. It is a specific type of lie, one that can usually be determined by context, but it is still deliberately stating untrue things. (And I also don’t find this to be a good example of satire, more of just projection, with the whole, “This is how the liberal media would have reported”) > [@](#): > > So … as for your other questions: > Yes, although I don’t believe I’ve ever deliberately acted to purposefully block traffic, which I see as something of a key distinction between your hypothetical crowd of football fans and some lefty protesters. The football crowd is trying to get to a game, or out after the game. They’re not _trying_ to block traffic. They’re not likely to run into the path of your vehicle or jump onto the vehicles if you try to nudge your way through. Quite the opposite, they’re likely to behave logically and try to get out of the way / clear a path if possible. The lefty protesters, at least in some cases, do the opposite. Ummm, you have never met football fans, I take it? I’ve had people walking by, pounding on my hood and screaming their teams name at me. I’ve had people decide that the crosswalk wasn’t wide enough, so they start going behind my car and between other vehicles at the light. I’ve even seen people walking on and jumping between the hoods and roofs of cars, though that’s not happened to mine. No one that I am aware of has ever actually tried to push them out of the way with their cars, so I can’t say definitively how they would react, but I would say that they would react with the same anger that anyone would when you threaten them with potential grievous bodily harm. > [@](#): > > I might say something, or tell the fans to look out. I sure as hell wouldn’t shoot you, and I wouldn’t purposefully place myself in the path of your vehicle. The question was if the car is actively threatening to or currently causing harm to the people in front of it. Would it be okay to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent it from doing so? > [@](#): > > Please see my point about the purpose / goal of the protesters vs the others, above. Right, and that is fine. It is the acknowledgement from you that it is the _reason_ that people are blocking the road that makes it okay to threaten them with your car, not just their act of blocking the road that I was looking for. If they are just assholes who don’t care about backing up traffic onto the interstate because they want to get to their football game, that’s fine, but if they are people that are trying to get people to take notice of inequalities or injustices to make social change, that is not. > [@](#): > > Your question has something like a double negative (“hard pressed” and “not”), and I’m tired, so I’m not sure I understood it correctly. But, if I did, then no, I don’t generally think it would be very difficult to make the case to a jury that someone swinging a bat and advancing on a person is a threat. There are probably some circumstances where it would (be difficult to make the case), but they’re basically edge cases / exceptional circumstances (imagining something like a kid who just got a new bat for Christmas and is cheerfully approaching his friend saying, “Hey, check out this new baseball bat I just got for Christmas. It’s awesome!” or a batter on a baseball diamond, coming up for his at-bat, swinging the bat to warm up as he approaches the batter’s box, catcher, and umpire). So, advancing on someone with a bat and expecting them to get out of your way is wrong, but advancing on them with tons of steel is fine. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-should-a-person-have-the-right-to-drive-thru-a-crowd-of-demonstrators/811732)._