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Sure, I never said anything that would be contrary to that. But this is real life, not a fairy tale. People like the "other driver" will always exists, will never "grow up" and will always be a burden and risk to others. We can rah rah rah for the good guy all day and it wont change anything. Nor will telling the other guy hes a jerk. So somebody has to stand up and do the right things regardless of what right or wrong. Of course i never said anything that would be different than an accident being 100% the other guys fault. But if you are focusing on that, you missed the point. It would be the other guys fault, but the OP would have to live with knowing that had he just pulled over or done something differently, he might have been able to save a life. I know that if i was the OP, and a tragic absence had happened, I would have felt badly for the loss of life or injury and i would wish that i had done more. But if you have no empathy for your fellow man, you wont get that feeling.
Conjecture.
I was involved in a fatal accident where a passenger in the at-fault vehicle was ejected right in front of my vehicle (still in the air when we collided). Sure, if I'd been on a different road, stopped to get some coffee, woken up five minutes later, maybe she'd have survived the ejection. Hard to say. The vehicle she was in was still moving pretty fast after knocking two cars off the road when the centrifugal force sent her through the back window. I don't feel any responsibility for her death. It sucks that she's dead, but wear your seat belt, don't drive 100 mph and lose control of your car.
Another time I was on the freeway and decided to use surface streets as it would be faster. About 15 seconds after a space cadet slammed into the car I had been behind at 50 mph. Maybe you move over and because you did road rager makes the pass on the right shoulder and mows down a kid on his bicycle on the way to school. Conjecture.
You can't worry about that stuff. I'm sure what I do (leaving a larger gap) antagonizes the moron behind me. That's not my concern. My concern is leaving a larger following distance so I have extra time to react for the both of us. If this sends an idiot into a fit of rage and he swerves into on-coming traffic on a two-lane road and kills a church van full of kids it really sucks but, well, that's how it goes. Maybe I saved the church van full of kids by being an extra two seconds back which gave him time to get back in his lane.
It's all conjecture. Drive safely and worry about what you can control. You can't control some maniac.
The OP pretty much spells out that he did provoke the guy in the very first post. The title of the thread is Passive Aggressive.
But the OP was wrong. The title is misleading. The OP admitted in the thread that because there was a car in front of him going slowly, he couldn't have done anything differently anyway. The OP mislead us with the thread title.
You said your self you were being passive in this situation. You were never in the position of power in this situation. The guy behind you had all the options and yours were limited. You had to actually divert your attention to mess with him. He did not...he had you in his sight the whole time.
There is a reason when two fighter jets go at it....the winner is always behind his enemy. Which is why I like to pull over and fall in right behind them. You screwed with this guy and put yourself in the vulnerable position of being in front of him.
In today's society making the choice NOT to roll the dice with an unknown person (Screwing with them) is not cowering in fear....it is called common sense. While you were off in your own world jamming to the Allman Brothers while messing with him...he might be in his own world about to melt down and take you with him.
I really like this post. I never knew that thing about two fighter jets... but it helps convince me even more that the best maneuver in situations like this is to get out of their way so that I am behind them.
I'd keep cameras on a lapel and on my vehicle, front and rear, just to record an assault in process.
He/She beats me into a pulp, I take their house and anything of value they own.
Although it is fun to laugh loudly at them after they get pulled over for speeding just a few miles up the road.
That is if there's some place safe/another lane to pull aside to in order to facilitate their warp speed jump to doom!!
I am not sure if you are aware of this but street fights can cause you harm that will last a life time. It isn't like the movies.
That wouldn't have achieved anything, because there was a car right in front of the OP, and it was that car that was slowing things down.
It's really weird that people are blaming the OP for something (not sure what). It goes to show the mentality that's out there. Even on a message board, people are getting road rage over nothing. Kinda scary.
No what it shows is that many people have low reading comprehension schools, and that's scary. In my case I dont blame the OP at all. I only stated he had the opportunity, but not the obligation, to reduce the chances of a tragedy happening. I even went on to build on the point that he was 100% right. But then i asked if being right was worth it if he or someone died.
To your point it's not as black and white as you'd like to believe. It MAY not have done anything, but maybe it would have. Maybe if the OP had gone out of his way to let the idiot pass, the car in front would have done the same. Worst case, the OP reduces the chances that hes involved in any accident the idiot causes. To me, thats reason enough. Its a cop out to say that my inactions were justified by someone elses inactions. That leads to a morally bankrupt society.
I was involved in a fatal accident where a passenger in the at-fault vehicle was ejected right in front of my vehicle (still in the air when we collided). Sure, if I'd been on a different road, stopped to get some coffee, woken up five minutes later, maybe she'd have survived the ejection. Hard to say. The vehicle she was in was still moving pretty fast after knocking two cars off the road when the centrifugal force sent her through the back window. I don't feel any responsibility for her death. It sucks that she's dead, but wear your seat belt, don't drive 100 mph and lose control of your car.
Another time I was on the freeway and decided to use surface streets as it would be faster. About 15 seconds after a space cadet slammed into the car I had been behind at 50 mph. Maybe you move over and because you did road rager makes the pass on the right shoulder and mows down a kid on his bicycle on the way to school. Conjecture.
You can't worry about that stuff. I'm sure what I do (leaving a larger gap) antagonizes the moron behind me. That's not my concern. My concern is leaving a larger following distance so I have extra time to react for the both of us. If this sends an idiot into a fit of rage and he swerves into on-coming traffic on a two-lane road and kills a church van full of kids it really sucks but, well, that's how it goes. Maybe I saved the church van full of kids by being an extra two seconds back which gave him time to get back in his lane.
It's all conjecture. Drive safely and worry about what you can control. You can't control some maniac.
Of course its conjecture, that was the point...but your examples clearly show you missed the key point. My guess is you were in such a hurry to post your opinion that you missed the point of others, including mine. Its not about being in the wrong place at the wrong time, your stories only illustrate that i would not want to drive with you. The irony is in your closing statement; "....Worry about what you can control". You realize that's what i said right?....he had the opportunity to control the situation, or at least reduce the chances of him being involved, by pulling over or otherwise removing himself from the situation, rather than antagonize and increase the frustration of the other driver. Of course you can't control the other driver. You can't control a wild animal either, but do you walk up and poke it with a stick? Use some common sense. And in your last example, what if he kills you in killing the kids in the church van, then was your being in the right, worth it? Was it the right course of action? Would your family have wished you had let him past so that they would still have a father/husband? And even if you were lucky enough to have not been involved, would you feel OK with yourself knowing that by simply letting this car buy you MIGHT have averted the situation? I would be really unhappy with myself knowing that I purposely increased his frustration to the point he did something stupid.
I am not sure if you are aware of this but street fights can cause you harm that will last a life time. It isn't like the movies.
I don't exactly get to hospitals much either, but that's my own choice.
The thing is, I agree with the OP for standing his ground and not catering/bowing down to such recklessness.
It might've been mentioned before, but as safe as it was to just pull over and let the meat-head pass, it would've done nothing to change the guys behavior.
People like the OP describes are typically multiple offenders who won't stop with their road-bullying until either a cop catches them, or they end up in an accident and there's no one there/no one chooses to get help for them.
It's one thing if it's just some cross-country, over-testoroned, speed demon preying on some locals.
But if it's a habitual, regional moron, some people have to stand up to them in some sort of way.
I'm just glad I'm not in the trauma-related professions of the medical field because if I ever found out the patient was involved in some sort of motor-related garbage gone wrong, I'd walk out of the job on the spot.
Driving semi-trucks as a job, using my personal pickup truck on long road trips, and riding my bicycle for local transport, I see too many people acting like fools in broad daylight all the time.
Short of getting their plate number down and phoning authorities, there's really no other way to physically nail these true "creepers".
The OP pretty much spells out that he did provoke the guy in the very first post. The title of the thread is Passive Aggressive.
The OP didn't like being tailgated, so he acted like a d1ck and escalated the situation. Why people can't drive in a manner that doesn't impact other people is beyond me.
If you find some time to read the original post please do that. And tell us what could he have done? It's amazing how people would believe one tiny part of the post that that falls along the line of their thinking and completely ignore the rest. And I am glad people haven't mentioned yet that maybe tailgater had an emergency and was going to hospital
I really like this post. I never knew that thing about two fighter jets... but it helps convince me even more that the best maneuver in situations like this is to get out of their way so that I am behind them.
Conversely, KittenSparkles, the guy who's being followed could become so enraged that he slams on his brakes intentionally causing the idiot to hit him, hop out of the car and start shooting.
If you find some time to read the original post please do that. And tell us what could he have done? It's amazing how people would believe one tiny part of the post that that falls along the line of their thinking and completely ignore the rest. And I am glad people haven't mentioned yet that maybe tailgater had an emergency and was going to hospital
I did read the post... you should read it again, because your comprehension of it is lacking.
... and the OP himself covered the "emergency/hospital" angle. Or did you miss that?
What the OP could have done was not try to "have some fun" with a tailgater, then "thoroughly enjoy" watching the other guy get madder and madder. You really think that someone who comes on here and posts about an experience like this was in the right? Uh, no. We're only getting ONE side of the story here, and the fact that the OP is immature enough to want to screw with a tailgater tells me his story is BS, and that he very likely DID provoke the other guy to some degree.
A normal person would have simply let the guy pass, and that would be the end of it. The fact that he's here on a forum asking if he should feel guilty tells me all I need to know.
BOTH parties are in the wrong here. Here's another post from the OP related to driving:
Now, that post is from 7 years ago. I'm hoping he's matured a bit during that time, or maybe he's wishing that someone back then would have been blocking them from going that fast, so he thinks that's his job to police other people now.
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...but your examples clearly show you missed the key point. My guess is you were in such a hurry to post your opinion that you missed the point of others, including mine. Its not about being in the wrong place at the wrong time, your stories only illustrate that i would not want to drive with you. The irony is in your closing statement; "....Worry about what you can control". You realize that's what i said right?....he had the opportunity to control the situation, or at least reduce the chances of him being involved, by pulling over or otherwise removing himself from the situation, rather than antagonize and increase the frustration of the other driver. Of course you can't control the other driver. You can't control a wild animal either, but do you walk up and poke it with a stick? Use some common sense. And in your last example, what if he kills you in killing the kids in the church van, then was your being in the right, worth it? Was it the right course of action? Would your family have wished you had let him past so that they would still have a father/husband? And even if you were lucky enough to have not been involved, would you feel OK with yourself knowing that by simply letting this car buy you MIGHT have averted the situation? I would be really unhappy with myself knowing that I purposely increased his frustration to the point he did something stupid.
