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Monday, January 3, 2011

I Became a Victim of Road Rage Today & I was Obeying the Law


I guess today is not going to be a great day because I became a victim of road rage.

Here's the whole story:

I was driving to work this morning and encountered two blacked-out traffic signals in a row. State law requires all drivers to treat dead signal intersections as a four way stop (refer to DMV driver manual, page 22).

As a mostly law abiding citizen (I jaywalk to my car across the street from my home), I stop at each dead signal; at the first signal, a truck decides to switch to the right lane and pass me without stopping at the limit line. At the second signal, a luxury sedan decides to blow their horn like hell simply because I'm obeying state law and also passes me in the right lane without stopping. At both of these locations, the vehicles behind me was at least 150 to 200 feet behind and I intentionally drove slower on approach to each dead signal.

The luxury sedan decides to take on some road rage. At the approach to the designated left turn lane, I enter the lane and the sedan decides to cut three lanes of traffic (the far right lane to the far left turn lane) to get behind me. I turn to the next street where the driver decides to pass me, cut me off, and hit the brakes. Having no choice, I had to slow down and attempt to pass to get away from the freak, but decides to go on more rage by blocking my lane changes. It's similar to what happened in this bus cam video, but at least I didn't smash the driver's bumper.

Sheesh! What a morning. I did call DPT signals to get those lights checked-out so I don't have to encounter it on my commute back home. And to that luxury car driver, up yours, and how about a trip to traffic court for blowing through a traffic signal?

3 comments:

Larry-bob said...

Car drivers should remember that if they blow past a stopped car, they might hit a pedestrian that the other car is stopping for.

Akit said...

Excellent point.

@makfan said...

Road rage is so dangerous, and you were completely right to stop at the lights that weren't working.