road rage--Re: alfa-digest V7 #173

[Timothy Leigh Rodgers <trodgers@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I was driving in LA and flicked off some clown who cut me off--and he
pulled out a gun and pointed it at me.  That experience has--ah,
"cured"--my road rage.  Now I just get out of their way--it ain't worth it.
 Driving and ego don't mix.  My father (rest his soul) used to say,
"Consider the source."

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>
>Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1998 08:07:12 -0500
>From: "Darren W. Abate" <dabate@domain.elided>
>Subject: Road Pigs - w/Gratification
>
>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
>

Timothy Leigh Rodgers

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