Pissing people off by being nice

Went up to see my mom in Pennsylvania and on the way home decided to forgo the turnpike and take the usually more relaxing 422 home.

So I get caught up in construction.. no worries, I am going home and not in any hurry. inching up to where the right lane ends is a 18wheeler who had spent at least the last 10 minutes trying to get over, but nobody was letting him. So I get up there and I stop and let the truck in. I used to drive commercial vehicles, I know how frustrating it can be.

guy behind me proceeds to lay on his horn continuously for over a minute and repeatedly gives me the finger for doing this.

a mile down the road, the constuction ends (the backup was caused by the lanes merging and the guy behind him pulls up beside me with his window down and proceeds to give me the finger again and yells at the top of his lungs a string or profanities that I am not sure the filter here can handle. I waved and hit the brakes hard (after making sure nobody was close behind me) to get rid of him. I find this all funny as technically I MAY have slowed him down a full 10 seconds.

There isn't much more fun than a wave and a smile to an a-hole. It usually sends them ballistic faster than being an a-hole back.

mad_machine wrote: Went up to see my mom in Pennsylvania and on the way home decided to forgo the turnpike and take the usually more relaxing 422 home. So I get caught up in construction.. no worries, I am going home and not in any hurry. inching up to where the right lane ends is a 18wheeler who had spent at least the last 10 minutes trying to get over, but nobody was letting him. So I get up there and I stop and let the truck in. I used to drive commercial vehicles, I know how frustrating it can be. guy behind me proceeds to lay on his horn continuously for over a minute and repeatedly gives me the finger for doing this. a mile down the road, the constuction ends (the backup was caused by the lanes merging and the guy behind him pulls up beside me with his window down and proceeds to give me the finger again and yells at the top of his lungs a string or profanities that I am not sure the filter here can handle. I waved and hit the brakes hard (after making sure nobody was close behind me) to get rid of him. I find this all funny as technically I MAY have slowed him down a full 10 seconds.

I usually wink and blow them kisses. If they have a real problem they can attempt to run me off the road or hop out at the next traffic snarl and feel a size 12 motivated by 298lbs of gravitationally assisted Mofo dancing on their skull.

John Brown wrote: I usually wink and blow them kisses.

Perfect.

I got that beat.

Stop and go traffic on 285 in Atlanta. I was in the far right lane, traffic moving 3mph. Old man in a pickup truck to my left has his blinker on, so I slowed down (stopped) to let him in. The guy behind me in a new-ish black Explorer lays on the horn and starts yelling out his window at me. He then swings into the emergency lane and trys to get in front of me. By that time the old man had completed his merge and the guy in the Explorer is now trapped in the emergency lane (since traffic closed up the space he left). The guy is screaming, yelling, pounding on his dash and threatening to kick my ass while driving beside me. He then starts to try and intimidate me out of my space and starts easing over onto my car. I figure he will back off but he just keeps coming over at a whopping 3mph. The guy proceeds to slowly ram the side of my car with his fairly nice SUV at a crawling pace. The stop and go action allowed him scrape the entire side of his SUV down the whole side of my car. His mistake was choosing to mess with someone who doesn't care about the finish of his car. Once I realized this guy was crazy and I didn't care about my car, I waited for an opening in the left lane, hit my blinker and took off. I kept moving left as I looked back to see the Explorer get boxed in by rigs. I can only assume that the Explorer sustained a fair amount of paint damage due to the paint chips scattered on my car.

All I could do was laugh. And all I did was let an old man get in front of me.

I don't know if my car was damaged, there's too many dents/scrapes already to know.

My usual response though is to blow a kiss and lick my lips. I made one schmuck drop his coffee cup in his lap doing that.

I had a person pull into my lane the other day on the interstate. I was in her blind spot on the left and slowly overtaking her and another car (I'd pulled to the left to give them the right lane as they entered the freeway).

Anyway...after a few seconds she just comes over when my front wheel and her rear are pretty much astride.

I eased it over onto the rumble strip and backed out of the throttle just enough to put myself 12" off her back bumper. I honked a bit too. Once I was fully behind (no longer beside) her and still about 12" back, I just smiled and waved. She waved back.

I just laughed. I figure she probably got quite a scare out of it...

Clem

The time the guy in an ford (whatever the 4 door explorer/pickup thingie is) tried to harrass me was classic. It's snowing...I'm going slow and following the guy in front of me as he takes up both lanes in one direction. No hurry...Iv'e got my 4 YO (at the time) with me and we're just going to the store (in significant snow in a rear drive corolla...Fun!).

This guy behind me in the ford thing gets all worked up because he can't pass...as if it's ME who's holding him up.

He goes by, then tries to pull into my lane as I pass him at an intersection later.

I think, "Really? You want to play a game of road rage with the guy driving a $200 car?"

The guy then goes out of his way (presumably) to follow me into a parking lot (where I was going shopping with my daughter), park me in, get out and try to confront me.

Him: "Do you have a problem?"

Me: "Yes, I do. Step away from me and my daughter RIGHT NOW."

Him: "I understand, but you were...but but but..."

Me: "No, you don't understand. This conversation is NOT going to happen. Step away from me RIGHT NOW."

That was pretty much the end of it.

(I'm VERY thankful my daughter was with me or something bad probably would have happened. I'm not a fighter, but this guy was a complete idiot...which makes me mad)

Clem

At a AFL football game many years ago with my brother in a beaten down Ford XC ute, game over we start to leave.

I join the mob slowly leaving and take my place in the cue. This brand new Jaguar makes moves to push in front of me, don't get me wrong I let anybody in if the indicate their intention, he did not and tried to push his way in. I looked at my brother and we both started to laugh and point at him, I even invited him to run into my beater, he backed off and waited his turn.

Mace is your friend, I've had a couple idiots try and play games with me. I thought one guy was going to loose it when I couldn't park my car b/c I had screwed up steering then. Ever since that and another time a couple idiots in a fox body almost made me crash, I'm not going to go down like some punk. People see mercedes and they ASSUME I'm a civilized person, never underestimate the enemy. I figure if a face full(I'll use the whole damn .5oz and spray inside the bastards car) of mace doesn't pacify you, I wouldn't mind a human punching bag.

I love the I drive a "fast luxury car get out of my way" attitude people around the bay area also have. When I'm driving my ratty pickup I really want one of these fools to ram me so I can have a double salvage title.

I love giving people the thumbs up sign when they blow through crosswalks. They always look so surprised and guilty.

I have a new game I play with drivers in New York when I'm on my motorcycle. They think that because I'm in a smaller vehicle, they can push me out of my lane. Well, if you touch my bike with your car, I'll break your berkeleying mirror off, call the police, and explain how you hit me on my bike in stop and go traffic.

Drivers try to inch me out of my lane all the time. Usually, I look them in the eye, then down at their bumper / my leg, and then back at them. They usually back off. I'm a scary-looking rider.

On the freeway, it's going to be a swift kick to the door of the car that tries to come into my lane without looking. Try explaining to the police why you're mad at the biker you just hit for denting your pretty little BMW.

I used to get really P.O.'d at people who honk, tailgate or get road-ragey because I am not tailgating the a slower car in front of me. I am slowly learning to take a deep breath and be forgiving. As much as we would like everyone to live by the Golden Rule. The reality is most people do unto others as has been done unto them. If someone is becoming a raging lunatic over something trivial, you can bet the have had to (or have to) deal with that (or worse) on a regular basis. No one deserves it. The best I can do is try not to perpetuate it.

Flip side-please don't let in side traffic that just pulled up if you are in a slow moving roadway. Ive been here for a fricken hour and not moved because you jackholes keep letting side roads in.

Sorry, edited to include some smileys!

Maybe it's a PA thing, but I do not understand this obsession people here (and I've lived here my entire life) have with the piece of real estate that is one car length ahead of where they are. The concept of merging to one lane in a construction zone just makes these people lose their minds. I've dealt with post #1 so many times it's ridiculous.

I was on route 130 in Jersey this morning going to work and there was an accident up ahead. The concept of merging into one lane was pretty much a foreign concept.

I'm giggling as I type this... Total asshat driving a beemer and weaving in and out of lanes comes right up on my butt, jiggling back and forth with rage. The rear washer squirter, on my mx-3 had come loose from its moorings and sits up real high. The fluid flies out in a horizontal stream, so I kept letting him have it. Bet he chewed his own teeth off.

I like that Lesley, my dad has a rear washer and one of my uncles said he should get a remote reservoir and put soluble oil in it. Turn the window nozzle upside down and nobody will stay on your tail for long.

Ahhh, I'd be too afraid someone else would get hurt using oil. Guy pissed me off, he wanted in my safe zone between me and the car in front.

Wilmington NC is the current champion of places I've been as far as bad drivers go. I'm no world traveler, but of any state and any country I've been in, it's the worst.

People who get road rage really make me laugh. If you think someone is pissed off at you for not tailgating the guy in front of you or not pulling up to stop-dead traffic in an intersection to block the whole thing, just wait until you bust out laughing at them.

Is it wrong to want a bumper sticker that says something like "Feel free to tailgate, I'd love your insurance Co. to buy me a new car"

About the second week I lived in Atlanta, I was stopped a a light in my grey market BMW E21 323i. A couple started crossing the road, but the woman was obviously in some kind of pain, she wasn't moving very well. They were walking slow, and couldn't clear the intersection before the light changed. The idiot behind me started blasting his horn because I waited for the people to cross the street. The woman's partner then turned around and flipped me off. Hey, I was in a BMW..I must have been the one on the horn.

Where's the "rolling eyes" smiley?

How about this? You're traveling up your interstate only to hit a wall of stopped cars. 'Crap. Must be an accident ahead.' Um. Yeah, you were right. There was an accident ahead. ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FREEWAY! Really? Is it that interesting that you need to hit your brakes, come to a near stop, and LOOK at the twisted-up cars on the other road? Sometimes, emergency crews need to work on both sides of the roadway to clear these things and I understand that. But when an hour-long backup is caused by rubber-necking, a little piece of me dies inside.

I'm not the road rage type. I never get mad while I'm driving or riding. But sometimes, I honestly wonder just what the berkeley some people are thinking. The words "vehicular homicide" come to mind.

Slefain, I hope you called the five-oh on that one. People like that need a good dose of Johnny Law from time to time. And the hilarity of knowing that their insurance company was going to triple their rates or, more likely, drop them altogether would have been worth the 10 minutes spent on the phone with the police.

Back a few years ago I was in a crew van on my way from DC to Balto on 95 one afternoon. We were in one of the right lanes keeping pace with a sedan in the far left running a decent speed in relatively light traffic. The lane between us was empty. Some shiny happy person came flying up the left lane and rather than merge to a center lane to get around the sedan, got within a few feet of the back bumper, nailed the brakes, then cut to the right passed the sedan and cut back to the left as soon as he got around. Mr Impatient then tapped the brakes and took off.

All of us in the back of the van started cheering when the guy in the sedan turned on his hidden flashing lights and pulled the jerk over

Theres too much traffic on the roads, and alot of people cant/shouldnt drive. Am i the only one that sees a simple solution to all this?

spdracer315 wrote: Theres too much traffic on the roads, and alot of people cant/shouldnt drive. Am i the only one that sees a simple solution to all this?

Oh yeah!

There is a simple solution, but you have to deal with all the politicians and moronic voters who believe there is a Constitutional "right" to drive.

In other words, ain't gonna happen unless it's tied to another touchy "rights" subject.