Many years ago in the last century...I gave the finger to a guy who cut across the road in front of me and my wife in our 66 VW Beetle. I didn't think anything of it. He did though. He turned around and chased us down, and wanted to pick a fight with me. What he couldn't see, was that I was wearing a full length leg cast. It amazed me that a guy in that much of a hurry, had the time to want to fight with someone for something so little.
You would've thought I had learned my lesson. Fast forward about 25 years and I'm going down a side street and doing over the speed limit. A guy decides to pass me. I give him the finger. He then proceeds to try blocking my way several times and gets out of his car a couple times to come over and fight me. Luckily, I had my 3 year old daughter in the car to protect me.
Okay...so I kind of had a little bit of a reason to cause those. A couple years later, I'm coming back from one of my Air National Guard deployments in my Camry and going north on I-5 between Tacoma and Seattle. Traffic is heavy. I'm in the far left lane and barely going 60 mph...but there are about 10 cars at least ahead of me. A guy in a little and beat up pickup truck comes up behind me. Sits on my tail and then flashes his lights at me. I have no where to go, and even if I move over, he won't have anywhere to go either. I hold my speed steady and tap the brakes to light up the brake lights. He backs off. This happens a couple times. Then he comes up on my right and tries to run me off the road. Seriously. We're doing 60 mph and he tries to swerve hard into me several times. The kind of very deliberate hard swerve like the video showed, except I'm thankfully in a car.
It's just not worth doing anything to provoke someone any more. Even if you think it is no big deal. There's been a couple times when someone pulled out a gun and shot someone. In fact, there was an incident like that recently. An older man (about our age) was in his vehicle with his wife. He took a dislike to something the motorcyclist did who was now in front of him. The traffic stopped and he got out of the car to pick a fight. She got off the bike to defend herself. He had her down on the ground when she shot him. He died...in front of his wife. For what?
I'd like to move to McCall Idaho. There are two traffic lights there. Only two. It seems that a traffic jam is when two people show up at a four-way stop and have to figure out who goes first.
Chris
