Road Pigs - w/Gratification

["Darren W. Abate" <dabate@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I, too, have a road rage story similar to Graham's...San Antonio, 1991 - I
was driving some friends downtown, with a load of music stands in my '67
Mustang (I hadn't found Alfas yet - don't hold it against me). I put my
signal on to change into the fast lane. I had oodles of room, but this pri*k
in a new Grand Marquis deliberately sped up just to cut me off. Seething, I
yelled the obligatory obscenities and shot him the bird. He got really
pissed, and started making violent swerving moves toward my car, with his
Mercury.

Enough is enough, so I decided to get away from him. I ducked around a motor
home and returned to the center lane, but this fool comes up on me again and
does the same thing! BUT...This time, he overcorrected on his return swerve
and sent his brand new Grand Marquis into the concrete center divider, at
about 60mph! His airbag popped, and he then lost it even more, his car
careening across *three* lanes of traffic, into the *other* concrete wall on
the right side of the highway! I still don't know how he managed to miss all
the other cars, but he didn't hit anyone else, as luck would have it! His
car spun to rest in the center of Hwy 281. By this time, I was a mile down
the road, and I had decided to go back and be honest with the cops. This
turned out to be the perfect thing to do, because this a-hole had already
started lying to the fuzz about how *I* was the one swerving at him, etc!
Then I showed up with my story, and his girlfriend layed into me about how
"her Ruben" wouldn't do that, yada yada...Whatever. The cop could tell this
guy was absolutely full of it, and let me go, no problems.

But get this. If the guy mashing his car wasn't gratifying enough (he wasn't
injured, thankfully), it turned out that the Merc wasn't even his car! I ran
into the same cop at Grady's BBQ about 3 years after, and he told me that
the guy was a salesman from one of the local lots, and he had taken the car
to meet his "girlfriend" in some clandestine operation. He lost his job over
it! I was rolling...If only we both could have controlled our tempers! :-)

Cheers

Darren
85 GTV 6 Gran Turismo - San Antonio, Texas

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