This happened to me, and it is a long story, but it is poking me in the head. I will keep it as short as I can. I am driving down the road. There is a car who is fucking around with people around them by going really slow and I get caught up in it. I do my thing, get around them, they pull in behind me because they do not like it, and I break check the fuck out of them. I get further up the road and am stopped in a left hand turn lane waiting for the light when these people pull up, and the woman driving starts shouting at me. I tell her to go fuck herself without any racial insults, and a car full of black people (the driver is also black) gets the fuck out in traffic. The crazy woman driving actually has to climb out the passenger door because the car is such a POS the drivers side door does not work. By the time they all get out the light is green and I go telling them all to go fuck themselves. Now, I pull into the very new gas station with all the video cameras and staff I know pretty well and go get my coffee. Of course, a few seconds later the whole black family gets out of the car and starts threatening me because I am a racist POS. The racism thing had no business in there because I do not use those words as insults. Now the mother is in front of me with her 17 year old son. She is lacing into me for being a racist and fucking around on the road. I can see in this kid's eye an anger and frustration far beyond what just transpired. And with all the claims of racism the mother is slinging I am now the target of all of his teenage anger. everything that is racing through my mind is all the overwhelming crap that is going to happen if the cops are called and this kid is right here up in my face. Then the rest of the family is taunting me to come outside so they can kick my ass. I am wondering why the fuck they want me outside because every inch of this place and the parking lot has obvious cameras in it. No one around is helping me and getting in the middle of this, which I am actually thankful for because I don't need some floriduh racist white dude to start making this worse. So I start obviously calling 911 hoping the mom will take the hint, say her last words to me, and drive away before the cops get there. But, she doesn't. No, she stays there for the few minutes until the cops come with her family running around breaking shit at the gas station. The kid is up in my face for a while trying to get someone to swing. eventually he wanders outside pissed because I would not swing. What I do not know is while I am left inside with his mother yelling at me he has taken a metal basket and put a couple of dings in my car by bashing it. I am going to give Jr a lot of credit because he is angry. You can see he is shaking angry and he is up in my face and he does not throw a punch. The cops come, and they are looking for every reason to arrest someone. The gas station owner gives them the video of the incident and also wants to press charges. I saw the marks on my car and did not know who did it so I said I would press charges. The woman who was talking about white privilege is now dealing with the police over her behavior. The cops saying they cannot influence me into pressing charges, but society won't be safe if they don't get to press charges. Really, no one hit me despite there being at least 6 of them, and there was nothing stopping them from doing it. no one ever got in their way. Not even the store employees. I get they needed to diffuse the situation, but as horrible as it was throguh tons of opportunity, no one swung. The results were that the 17 year old kid who was yelling at me got charged for the property damage and disturbing the peace. Another person from the car is being charged with something else. that was done much later. I think it had more to do with the damage done to the station because I was not involved in much of that. The whole time the mother is shouting at me I just want to say to her what are you doing starting this sort of fight when you have your kid who is angry and going to get into trouble. What if he had hit me? You brought your kid into that situation where he will face the reprocussions for the rest of his life when you could have driven away and been done with it. Even in the street, they had me with their gang. They did not beat me up, what was the fucking end game of all of that? The prosecutor asked me if I wanted to say something to the kid and the mother and she was black so I just explained it to her and did not submit the repair money for the restitution because it was obvious the mother had to scrounge for whatever she had. The kid had prior troubles with the law and what the fuck am I going to say to make shit better for him. There are no words that can come from a white person in my position that are going to make that kid understand, and even if he does I am sure I am only a small minority of white people that even give a fuck. I think what I am really angry at is that none of my actions were based on the race of the people in the car, but because I did my normal dumbass road rage bullshit racism hit that family. I know their actions were not right in a million years, but that does not change the fact the world will probably kick them harder for being black, which seems to be what had them all at high energy in the first place.
nothing I can say about the whole situation in general because I'll be called a racist. I will say if you don't curb (get it? Driving & curb?) your road rage it will end in tragedy sooner versus later. My driving attitude that I try to maintain & sustain is "every other driver but me is an idiot". Thus I try to keep calm and stay clear of their idiocy when possible. My rage will just cloud my thinking and judgement and make me an idiot driver, continuing the cycle. Statistically driving is the most dangerous thing any of us can do on a daily basis so we need to make it as safe as possible. Side note there is no such thing as "safe" only "safer."
Never brake check anyone, no matter how stupid they're being. And note that the things in your car are "brakes," not "breaks."
The brake check is a massive curbing of my road rage driving. I do hear you. I have many incidents of RR that have gone way over the top. It is something I work to curb through medication and meditation. I imagine if someone ever shot at me in a car they better kill me because that would probably trigger a full out demon incident where I would go all out to wreck them. When that demon comes out I am balls to the wall laughing like a maniac and out for destruction without any concern for anything. I am not bragging because I have no care and the consequeces are not important. I have been at the end of an episode stuck in a parking lot with my car wrecked because i drove it into the ground trying to kill someone. This was a busy florida parking lot. The guy who was running was running for his life because of how scared he was of me, and he had gotten out of his car earlier and punched me. The only reason I did not hit him at full speed was because he was able to avoid me. That is one of a billion times I have been driving hair on fire ready to kill and die. Believe it or not, the drugs help. Before I was on DXM incidents would happen multiple times a day. I have gotten it down to a couple of times a month in an area of high excitement. This person was really fucking around when I encountered her first, which is what set me off. Not that it excuses my actions there, but I know what playing games on the road looks like, and she was.
First, thank you I will try to associate the proper spelling in the future. I cannot guarantee it will work out considering the spell check won't catch it and I already have the association wrong in my head. Second, there is not going to be any luck on that brake check thing. I have toned it down over the years, and I try not to use it for small things. I guess I had to because there are so many smaller things I would never be able to get anywhere. But there will be bad timing, people who really piss me off, and other reasons why I am going to do that. When I do a brake check it is not your normal check either. I am watching the victim when I do them. Not to protect myself as much as to make sure they have to slam theirs hard. I don't like to do one of those brake checks where if the person happens to be not paying attention they might avoid slamming on their breaks and continue on because I accelerated out of it too soon. I normally do it with a cut off so I know they are focussed on me, way too close, and need to slam the breaks or hit me. The person often overreacts due to their surprise and it can throw them into a spin or wreck behind me. I like to do them at higher speeds because if the person freaks out their car will often slide sideways from the emergency breaking which does wonderful things in the rear view and keeps you out of it if you are accelerating. I have seen people go straight into the median cement dividers, flip their cars, and go spinning off onto the shoulder or dirt in the middle of the road. If you are ever in a high speed road rage incident it is the way someone can wreck you really easily. The worst part is your instincts are what is going to keep the lead car safe. If you let go and just hit the car in front you would probably cause them to wreck too because you would knock them into a spin or sideways slide. But because you do not hit them they just have to keep control through the break which often does not have to be that extreme to cause a person to stomp their breaks way too hard. Yes, I have done this a lot.
I had an incident about 15 years ago. No violence, just a lot of misconceptions and not on my end. Not intentionally, anyway. James was still a toddler and I had him in the stroller as we went into the bank. I spoke with the lady at the customer service desk to ... I don’t ... get checks, get a new card, get something besides depositing or withdrawing money. Anyway, the lady went off to do what she needed to do and James was jabbering about something so I turned my back to the counter and focused on James for a minute. At some point, I realized I left my purse open and wallet out on the counter behind me. As I don’t have eyes in the back of my head and had no idea if anyone else had approached the counter, I quickly turned and secured my possessions. When I looked up, the girl who originally helped me and her coworker were looking at me with smug, angry looks on their faces. I didn’t say anything. But my reaction had nothing to do with their heredity but my own lack of responsibility.
I had an incident 20+ years ago where a guy who'd I'd nearly traded paint with on the freeway--he was driving like an asshole and I, unfortunately, responded in kind--chased after me, and followed me to my workplace. We had a few words and the situation got defused, but I'll admit to being a little bit unnerved. Had I felt truly threatened, what I had in the trunk of my car would've made him really unnerved...
I don't do an actual slowing down brake check, but if someone is tailgating me I will gently tap on the brakes for an instant not enough to slow much at all, but to flash my brake lights and hopefully make them realise they are too close. If they continue (and there isn't another lane I can pull over into) then I'll slowly ease off the accelerator - if they won't leave the appropriate stopping distance for the speed then the only safe option is to reduce the speed.
