[HappyWheels]

First of all - pat on your back for holding your temper! Something that most of us fail! Mighty good of you!

Next one is an advice (FOC): Never ever increase speed when you see a green light. My take is that, from Green it can only go to Red; no use hard braking at the last moment.

[lohithrao]

I guess a very good move by you as mentioned by others.

What i have learnt is that you can never sense into morons and there is no derth of them. there has been too many instances where i felt the same but to b in a practical said if you go the aggressive way there is a good chance of things getting very dirty.

[akshaymahajan]

I have a similar question
Yesterday a friend of mine was going through a bylane half of which was dug up. There is this rickshaw he is overtaking when suddenly the rickshaw waala decides to turn into him such that his right rear wheel hits the rear axle of the rickshaw. The rickshaw overturns. He stops his car at one side and gets down to see if anyones injured. There is a 40 (give or take 4) year old aunty in the rickshaw who has a few scratches on her palm.
Now this female gets up and starts shouting at my friend her exact wordings being "Abhi mere patti ko aane de usse pitwaungi and fir thaane mein band karwaungi".
This is enough for a 20 year old student to blow his head off. He still keeps his cool and offers to take the female to his place for first aid as his dad is a doctor. Na but she doesnt care about anything he says. She starts calling people up and within 15 minutes she has like 8 uncles standing there arguing with my friend. All of them are like "aawara bacche bina license ke rash driving karte rehte hain" and blablabla. The rickshaw waala has no problems but this aunty.. Then finally he takes out his phone and starts dialing 100. But all the people there ask him not to. Finally one of the nearby shop owner uncles who saw the whole thing comes up and sorts it out and my friend is allowed to go.
Without any fault of his he is held there for 90 minutes.

I want to know what is the best way to tackle such issues.
And is calling the police a good idea as at the end they are surely go to make some money from you.

[vijayummidi]

As one of those who commute on the road everyday and as one of those who experienced such incidents in the past, I do say that you did the right thing.

In fact, it is difficult to control oneself at that moment. Good that you have controlled yourself.

Secondly, based on your narration of his attitude, it appears that he carries a very wrong attitude and who knows he might be carrying some weapon.

My experience: I park my car (SX -4) app. 200 meters from my house. I do not come to know immediately if something happens to my car. I can only sleep properly because of its internal security arrangements.

One bad night some guys (appeared to be drunk) hit my car from the back so hard at mid night that I had to replace the back and front doors, back bumper, and front bumper and also a part of the right side body. After being covered by the insurance, I still had to shell out Rs.15000/-.

It was difficult to control when I saw the damaged car. But, there is no option but to accept the reality.

Leave the culprits to GOD almighty. I am sure, HE will definitely teach them a lesson at an appropriate time. Even a hard core thief who could successfully committed a number of robberies at one point will definitely leave a clue to be caught by police.

So, do not worry. Keep your faith going.

[MX6]

you did good. Move ahead with this thought. The moron who broke rules, one day might try the same with a truck and will end with a big dent and a few broken bones may be. Law of averages will catch up with law breakers sooner or later. you did really good.

[Sli_ce]

Thanks for all your comments everyone. i completely agree with all of you, there is no Point in educating or feeding sense into an idiot who's so callous, ignorant and selfish, that he's not even bothered about his own gf's/wife's (whoever she was) safety.

if id failed to maneuver the car at the very last second, i would had gone straight into the passenger side of the other car, and im afraid that could have made things rather ugly.

straightdrive - you are absolutely right, i usually slow down when approaching a signal, be it red or green. unfortunately, in this case, i scanned the traffic around and then decided to pass... i also honked and used the dipper, thinking that would be sufficient. but alas...


Vijayummidi - sorry to hear about your situation, and i totally agree with you about the possibility of a weapon, judging by his not-bothered attitude, after all, we all read about how "trigger-happy" delhi is everyday.. in the papers.

Thanks again everyone.

[oss]

Originally Posted by akshaymahajan

I want to know what is the best way to tackle such issues.
And is calling the police a good idea as at the end they are surely go to make some money from you.

Police will help you negotiate and reasonable sum of money to be given to them (regardless of who is at fault the person driving the costlier vehicle will have to pay up), and will take their own cut.

Recently a friend of mine while driving in Bangalore bumped a scooter in a signal crossing. He tried to move (turn right) when the signal turned amber, before red, and the scooter guy waiting in the road right of him took a right turn before his signal turned green. His reasoning is anyway my friends signal turned amber so he is at fault.

To complicate matters my friend had a TN plate and the scooter-wala was a local thug - or he seemed like one, so called up all his contacts. Within no time 4-5 biggies surrounded my friend and started demanding a hefty sum.

The cop over there never turned up till the crowd gather and then he started advising my friend that he should pay up and settle the matter amicably. He did help in the negotiation and brought down the huge demand to less huge amount (won't say reasonable).

Funny thing was when everything was over and my friend tried to get into his car, the cop demanded money for himself for helping him out of the situation

What do you say to this.

[jigbarai]

Originally Posted by Sli_ce

Guys,
i see a green signal and decide to make haste.

This is where you went wrong. This is where most of the people go wrong, at signals. Never, never push the pedal looking at the decreasing counter or the green/yellow light. Even if you see an empty road. You will often find morons spring up from nowhere.

As i approach the Signal at about 60kmph, I see an Indica suddenly emerge from the pack of vehicles and like a bat out of hell,

reflexes kick in and i slam the brakes as hard as i can. Unfortunately, the Swift VXI i am driving has no ABS and since it'd been drizzling all day, the tarmac is wet.

so here i am, in an out of control car, desperately trying to maneuver, embracing for Impact.

If you were say in the 30 kmph range at the junction, you would have been able to have far better control over the car - ABS or NO ABS. You were lucky to avoid serious impact. Many a times, people arent as lucky.

to my obviously harsh and loud reaction, furious state of mind and movement towards him, all the guy has to say is F*** Y** as he continues to talk on the phone, backs up a little and drives away.

Furious as i can be, all i can think of is to follow him, and kick the living daylight out of him, but then something amazing happens.

i think its the Team-BHP effect. i sit back, light a cigarette and drive away.

So when & how will that moron learn a lesson ? He'll probably keep doing it. So common with auto wallahs and BEST buses here in Mumbai. They'd crawl way further ahead of the red signal, as if in a race to take off and start 5 seconds before their signal turns green.

looking back, i still regret not to have taught him a lesson and im still furious. but some part of me says, i did the right thing.

what do you think?

Good anger management. Applaud you for not picking up a street fight. But like you say .. 'the regret' ..

Drive safe. Cheers.