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

Quote:

Originally Posted by CarNerd (Post 5532725)

When the guy was in front of you for such a long time, why didn't you think of slowing down and taking a turn somewhere to lose him?

The location was not apt for this, if I could, I should have done it at the start only( Only if I knew this would turn into a road rage) where there were few societes.

However during the later part of incident ( near Star Bazaar) all right turns lead to either dead ends or unders construction societies. That section is notorious for criminal activities during evening and night time. I think it was best to reach to a main road, a more populous area where I could find cops or could lose him and thats what I tried to do.

Best that I or anyone could've done was to driver slower and allow few other cars to come between so that he would have no chance of blocking me.

Now that I retrospect the entire incident there are couple of lessons to be learnt here

1. Proper route selection even in City drives, I am never taking that route again (irrespective of what Google Baba says ). I would stick to the main roads only, specially during evening or night time, even if it means a bit delay or facing traffic jam. A bit of time saving is not worth it.

2. Leave towards destination keeping buffer for delays.I will admit I too was in a bit of hurry to reach my destination that day, it probably lead me to honk which led to the mess. No shame in admitting this.

Two sad incidents of road rage in Delhi during the weekend were reported, that will unnerve any law abiding person. Both the victims were perched on the SUV's bonnets, post the skirmish. One victim died, while the other was dropped post a police chase.

In the first incident a SUV hit a bike carrying two. The bike rider was flung on to the SUV's bonnet and was driven for a distance and dropped.The poor rider died. Police arrested the SUV driver.

A SUV hit a car quite a few times in the second incident. The car driver started arguing with the SUV driver, who was drunk and was trying to escape. His path was blocked by the car driver who stood in front of the SUV. The SUV driver pushed the accelarator and tried to speed away, when the car driver jumped on the bonnet. He was driven in that position for a distance. Police chased the SUV and the car driver was dropped.

These incidents paint a gory picture of the scenario in Delhi. Such incidents keep happening elsewhere too, but Delhi leads. Sadly, the victims could be any traffic user who may not be at fault but a victim of such road rage by these goons, "mighty" and outlaw drivers due to their criminal acts. Fellow traffic users prefer "peace" and maybe shoot images/videos but do not intervene letting thd goon have his upper hand. Victims suffer.

The better way out for victims is to click images/videos of the incident that identify the goon and his lawlessness. The matter can be reported to police and adequate media coverage may be given by talking to reporters.

Rather than victims confronting the goon at the spot and taking law into their own hands (we are no film heroes), it's always preferable to leave the job to law enforcers and media. Confrontation could lead to further losses of life/limb and property for the victims.

The link

https://auto.hindustantimes.com/auto...912315960.html

Quote:

Originally Posted by anjan_c2007 (Post 5539718)

A SUV hit a car quite a few times in the second incident. The car driver started arguing with the SUV driver, who was drunk and was trying to escape. His path was blocked by the car driver who stood in front of the SUV. The SUV driver pushed the accelerator and tried to speed away, when the car driver jumped on the bonnet. He was driven in that position for a distance. Police chased the SUV and the car driver was dropped.

A video of this horrific incident:-

https://ishare.rediff.com/video/othe...delhi/11228601

Quote:

Originally Posted by AdityaDeane (Post 5548336)

Not exactly my car's accident, but 2 instances of road rage caught on my Dash cam within minutes of each other yesterday.

People in India have no driving sense and there will be no driving sense till they keep handing out licenses like ration cards, rather than increasing difficulty in driving tests they just impose fines and fill their coffers.

I myself have witnessed this, in your case it could be a local camper that frequents that village/town so they decided to bully the new face.

I live in a busy area myself and the access to the colonies is via service road which is sufficiently wide but with cars parked on either side it becomes a cumbersome task to navigate and if some one driver stops to give space to oncoming traffic, the cars keep going like no one's business and when I witness such I just stop at a side to let the traffic that has built up on the other side to go then they don't stop so I just give a dipper and slowly creep in when I see the chance.

Gauging the situation is the key, there is no point in arguing with a bunch of single celled organisms and ruining the mood.

One day i had a person arguing with me on signal , we both were on scooters.
The reason was i asked why he was cutting me while we were waiting for signal to turn green.

He started racing with me aggressively, and even i started riding faster. I wanted to avoid this, so while he was full steam trying to evict a reaction from my side, i braked and took a lane. The reaction on his face was priceless lol:

He was stunned since there was no way he could come back , which he realized and hence kept going ahead.

Its not easy or it doesn't come naturally on some occasions, but its best to retract and let the moment go.

Road rage incident in Pune. The alleged is a "youth worker" of a political party. His mother is a renowed professor in Pune's Fergusson college.

https://punemirror.com/pune/crime/nc...1685302276.htm

I abhor and at the same time am ashamed of the plight of law abiding, tax payers, "aam" junta in this country. What you do in a road rage incident like this? Where your mother / sister / wife can be a victim? Just gobble up the profanity, filth and move on? Take beating lying down, and move on like a coward. :deadhorse

Quote:

Originally Posted by StepUP! (Post 5556369)

What you do in a road rage incident like this? Where your mother / sister can be a victim? Just gobble up the profanity, filth and move on? Take beating lying down, and move on like a coward. :deadhorse

The least what you can do is install a dashboard camera for your cars. Also apologize and move on. No use trying to argue with these idiots. A few police cases against a "youth leader" is good for their political career but not for others.

Drove to Daman over the weekend and I observed how aggressive people get when you try to overtake them on the highway.

I have a habit that I picked up for when I overtake vehicles on the highway. I flash my headlights a couple of times and toot the horn if I’m driving in the day. This is just to make sure the vehicle I’m overtaking is aware of my presence. No use blaring the horn at right-lane hoggers because they simply will not budge.

Now, on my recent drive, 3/5 cars would speed up and even try to block me from overtaking when I attempted to do so. Cars which were doing 60kmph on the highway would speed up to ~100kmph just to block me from overtaking. On some instances, I had to keep accelerating past 130Kmph to merge back in the lane safely.

I don’t remember it being this bad ever before. How do y’all deal with these people on the highways?

The car guy should have deescalated and apologized for sure. But what on earth was the biker doing! The breaking mirrors/denting cars as some sort of "revenge" seems to be par for course in Bangalore (which would have been insane, but who are we kidding, this is blore), but what the hell was just swerving in front of the car! Are they really willing to risk their lives for hurt egos? It's batshit crazy. Not to mention they could have easily skidded and whole thing could have gone south given the condition of the road.

The sane person is the lady in the car, who asked the guy to stop the car and apologize. If only the driver had paid heed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nalin1 (Post 5560671)

Whose fault?

It was a huge splash and could have been avoided, especially because the car driver was initially slow, and even after spotting the huge water logging, he decided to accelerate upon seeing the open stretch. I guess thats what pisses off everyone. I make it a point to slow down if there is so much of water whether or not there are cars around.

That said, such show of aggression is definitely unacceptable and the scooter rider has no right breaking the car mirror and should have the brains to understand that he could even cut his hand in that act. Demand a new set of clothes, why break mirror.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nalin1 (Post 5560671)

Whose fault?

The guy in the car, shouldn’t have accelerated, rather should have just slowed down and apologized with a hand signal to the guy and the situation would have been calmed down then and there only. Instead he tried to run from the situation and thus hurting the ego of the bike rider which in turn enabled another sequence of events and that is where the bike rider was wrong. At that moment he should be more concerned about his and pillion's safety.

In general people have to be courteous when they see a puddle of water and some pedestrian or two-wheeler nearby. Basic human etiquette is to slow down.

We need to understand only two things on the roads, “Empathy and Right of way”, to reduce the unwanted events we face daily on our roads.