Team-BHP - Road Rage - Understanding, Avoidance and De-escalating Situation

Very informative thread, thanks for sharing.
I have witness situations, which could be classified as road rage. Most of the time I have tried my best to maintain my composure and help people to defuse the situation.
Some time they have worked, at few occasions I, myself have been at receiving end, nothing serious.
I will try to keep the pointers mentioned in mind next time and will try my best not to be involve in road rage myself.
By the way I have shared this thread’s link to few of my friends and they have been really happy to read such an informative thread.

Very good thread to help us de-escalate in situations getting out of hand.
I have two interesting incidents to share. In the first one I was the aggressor and the stance of the other party immediately cooled me down. In the second one, the roles were reversed.

1. I was travelling from office to home on my pulsar. There is one maruti 800 driving in front of me and in front of the maruti is an Ape goods carrier. I see an opportunity and begin to overtake the maruti. As soon as I do that, the maruti driver decides to overtake the ape without checking his rearview mirrors. As a result I am forced to swerve and brake. Now I am fuming and at the next signal arrive parallel to the maruti and shout asking why was he driving like that. The maruti driver, a man in his 50s I would guess, immediately folded his hands as if in prayer and asked me very gently, sorry sir did I do anything wrong ?
I had no answer to this and simply shrugged and zoomed off when the signal turned green.

2. Again I was on my way home from work, this time on an Activa. At a chowk I had to turn right and the signal was not working so it was essentially a free for all. I was following a group of 2-wheelers crossing the chowk when suddenly a biker from the opposite direction decides to cut in front of me. I had to brake hard and I saw that he was looking at me with a smirk on his face as if he was waiting for me to start a verbal fight. I merely smiled and told him - There is no race here sir, you may go ahead.
That person had no retort for this and the look on his face was priceless - angry but confused. As a result he went his way and I went on mine -smiling :)

As a result I have learned that many a times, being polite and having a smile on your face instead of a scowl can indeed de-escalate situations very quickly.

A Gastro doctor was beaten black and blue by an offender who was driving down the wrong side of Bangalore's ORR.

The offender almost mowed down Traffic Cop while making his way through the wrong side. The doctor saw this and tried to stop the offender who started tailgating him in return and allegedly blocked the doctor's vehicle in the middle of ORR and thrashed him badly.

The apathy is that there were more than a dozen of cars on the road, the drivers of which were mere onlookers at the entire incident. The doctor was even advised to refrain from such matters as it was Police's duty to book offenders!!

Not sure where we are heading to!

Read this link for more details: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/c...w/32879860.cms

Mods: I knew there was a separate thread, but it had to be brought to everyone's notice that is why i created a new thread. Apologies!

Very sad indeed.
People dont get involved because they dont know who is correct or wrong. Unless and until I have seen the incident myself I wouldnt want to take any one side. All that you can try to do is to stop a fight, but in most cases it could turn out to be fateful.
Play it smart, if you witness such incidents use your camera to capture an image of the vehicle and hand it over to the Police, remember the guy your following just tried to mow down a cop.

Absolutely pathetic - first of all the Innova driver had the gall to break the rules with brazen impunity, and then come and thrash up a fellow motorist who questions him. People of these kind should be bought to book as soon as possible, and cases of criminal assault should be booked against them. Surely there should be CCTV cameras around, the police should get a clue of the Innova guy - IMHO, the doc should not take this lying down - he should give it back.

What was the doc thinking? To chase these goons is asking for trouble. They have nothing to lose and hence their behavior. I would request people to let them be, its not worth it, they might cause you permanent harm.
Thank god the doc is not critically injured.

India is a lawless place, one needs to keep that in mind always. Whether some of you might like it or not, its a jungle out there. God help us all.

This is what I have been maintaining all along from my personal observation. Innova/Scorpio drivers (whether yellow board taxi or flag bearing politico's ) are the worst offenders on our roads. Most of these drivers are uncouth, ill-mannered, short-tempered types who just look for an excuse to get into fights. They drive extremely rashly. Always honking and breathing down your bumper trying to pass you somehow. And most of these guys are strongly built ( as though it is a criteria for them to be selected as driver for these big cars ). But my advice, hire a diminutive guy, if any of you guys are on look out for a driver. Recently, a real-estate guy ( himself a crook ) in my town got thrashed very badly by his own Innova driver ( very strongly built ) following an arguement over fuel bill.

Someone above said, not sure who was at fault. An educated doctor's word against an uncouth scoundrel's word?

I live close to the place where this happened and can imagine it all. This junction is notorious for vehicles coming on the wrong side of the road. This is because there are no right turns anywhere in a busy four road crossing and nobody has the patience to go and do a U turn ahead. I would venture to say that there are more vehicles coming on the wrong side of the road than the right side here !! I used to stop a few of them or yell at them before, but I have given up - it is just an avalanche of wrongsiders. Surely there is a need for traffic reorganisation.

I once berated the cop who was standing at the junction for turning a blind eye to every infraction, He took out his Blackberry and showed me his day's work - he and his partner had booked some 800 people that day . No kidding ; I saw his Blackberry.

The good doctor deserves every sympathy. So do the cops - I see them every day and they have an impossible job at that junction. Its not just the Innova drivers who break the law there - two wheelers, autos, water tankers, cars, LCVs, private vehicles, trucks, nobody gives a damn.

This further cements my desire to buy a dashcam. THere was no point for the surgeon to chase that guy down and lecture him - just take a video and upload on facebook.

Why bother taking on such loons when the law and order infrastructure is non-existent!?!

What i'm surprised is that when confronted, why dint he dial 100 and put them on speaker reading out number of offender's car and his description - that would've put fear of god in the new person.

-- I have not been in such a situation of late, but in TN, with the language barrier, that's my only plan.

There is no point in having confrontation with those goons. I always avoid them. If the cops can't do anything neither can us. Whenever there is a scorpio or fortuner or any other muscular vehicle with a muscular driver then I give them the way. I am least bothered even if they come on the wrong direction. I know that I am very self-protective here but my family's and my security comes first for me rather than anything else.