#RoadRage

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Don’t engage with road-ragers. Just don’t – it’s not worth the aggravation or potentially negative outcome. Here, however, there’s no violent or crazy result, and the situation was handled overall pretty maturely by the motorcyclist, without any voices being raised or windows getting punched-out (save for the initial one-finger salute, but that’s basically a natural knee-jerk reaction).

OK, boys and girls, repeat after me: “Do not engage with idiots. They can be dangerous…and possibly have even crazier friends who are armed.”

We’ll start off by saying that what the car driver does is wrong, and according to news reports, she is, as a result of her road rage, being charged with 16 charges, including Aggravated Assault, Littering, Endangering the Welfare of a Child (her child was in the car) and Reckless Driving. Hopefully, she’ll learn her lesson courtesy of the court system.

Road-rage poster-boy William Crum was sentenced to 15 years in prison for intentionally swerving his car into a passing motorcycle. Video of the incident (see below) showed a car veering into motorcyclist Eric Sanders and his passenger Debra Simpson, causing them to crash.

A video making the rounds this week showed a rider trying to be a good Samaritan after seeing a wallet slide off the roof of a car as its inattentive driver pulled onto the street. Picking up the wallet, the rider chased after the car but was given a rude response. The rider tried again, and this time, the driver understood what happened, and the rudeness turned to relief.

Okay, kids, we need to talk. However, before we discuss the videos below, we need to stipulate a couple things: First, the motorcyclist’s action that precipitated this series of events was illegal. Lane splitting is against the law in Florida. Yes, what he did was trivial but still illegal. Second, the car driver’s reaction was so over-the-top-disproportionate to the motorcyclist’s actions that he clearly has other issues in play. What we need to look at in this road rage video, not to mock or to lay blame but, rather, to identify and learn from, is how the rider essentially threw gasoline on a conflagration. He was extremely lucky to escape unharmed and without injuring others.