Road rage tales

[wdb]

On Thursday I was taking the 'long way' to work in my STi. That route has a highway onramp to die for, a long, arcing 360 degree decreasing radius beauty that just makes my day. Except on Thursday there was a bluehair in a Mercedes doing 20MPH all the way around. Ah, well.

When we got almost to the end of the onramp, there were 2 SUVs stopped in the opposite lane. The drivers (both white males with gray in their hair) were out of their vehicles, and they were gesticulating and screaming at each other. I stopped, shouted at them to get their attention, pointed out what a beautiful morning it was and why don't we all just go our own ways and have a day. The one guy looked at me, took a breath, shrugged, and started heading back to his truck. The other one fired another verbal barrage, and they were back at it.

I shrugged and drove away. It really was a beautiful morning and I had spent enough of it on them.

[UltArc]

No STi in the garage? I'd like to see your numbers.

[niky]

Hmm.

I was getting onto an elevated toll from the airport last night, started merging left when I caught a car coming up very fast and jinking hard right into my lane to overtake an old Mitsubishi. I swerved back to the right, and a black 67 Mustang comes blatting by, missing me by inches. The guy in front of me had already merged before this joker came out, so horse-boy jinks left and almost takes out the Mitsubishi.

This is in the pouring rain, and horse-boy is in a cart-sprung, live-axle Mustang with a straight-pipe exhaust and wide aftermarket rims (looked like big 255 tires). Yeah. Rain is always safer with wider tires... [/sarcasm]

Pissed, but I'd seen it coming and had gotten off with no issues. So I drive like normal (nice place to pulse-and-glide, lots of dips and rises) as he zooms off into the distance, and a few miles later, I see him up ahead, near the toll booths. Mitsu-boy has caught up with horse-boy and is mad-dogging him. Finally, he blocks the Mustang in (which is not just black... it's rattle-can black), jumps out of his car (wife screaming at him from the passenger seat) and starts to kick the bee-jesus out of the Mustang.

I'm already next in line for my toll gate, so I can't pull out to take pics, so I point it out to the traffic enforcers. Also couldn't stop after the gates to rubberneck, had a car full of kids, so I never found out what happened.

The lasting impression I got of the whole thing: Man, that exhaust was terrible. I've heard fart-canned Civics that sounded better. Probably wasn't getting good mileage, either, and needed a tune, considering a 1.6 liter econobox had managed to haul him down pretty easily.

[wdb]

Originally Posted by UltArc

No STi in the garage? I'd like to see your numbers.

No, you wouldn't. If I put the Subie numbers on here I'd probably incite some road rage myself! It doesn't do horribly, but the simple truth is that hypermiling in an STi is like trying to teach a pig to dance.

I bought the car when gas was much, much cheaper and I was driving far, far fewer miles. When my weekly mileage jumped up I bought the Fit, which literally paid its way in fuel savings alone.

Originally Posted by niky

[...]Mitsu-boy has caught up with horse-boy and is mad-dogging him. Finally, he blocks the Mustang in (which is not just black... it's rattle-can black), jumps out of his car (wife screaming at him from the passenger seat) and starts to kick the bee-jesus out of the Mustang.

I once saw a guy jump out of his car at a stop light, run up to the car in front of him, and start kicking away at the driver's door.

Thing was, he hadn't set the handbrake on his own vehicle, and it started rolling away -- door hanging open, engine running. He kept on kicking that other car until he heard the whomp of his car slamming backwards into another car, which was helpless to move out of the way due to traffic.

This was during the chaos and mayhem that passes for Christmas shopping season. Tensions were probably high even before anyone turned an ignition key.

[UltArc]

What?! Stay out of the turbo, EOC, other than some aerodynamic features that might bring it down, an STi could be a great eco (FE) car! But I know when it becomes, uh, fun time, it kills the MPG.

[niky]

Originally Posted by wdb

I once saw a guy jump out of his car at a stop light, run up to the car in front of him, and start kicking away at the driver's door.

Thing was, he hadn't set the handbrake on his own vehicle, and it started rolling away -- door hanging open, engine running. He kept on kicking that other car until he heard the whomp of his car slamming backwards into another car, which was helpless to move out of the way due to traffic.

This was during the chaos and mayhem that passes for Christmas shopping season. Tensions were probably high even before anyone turned an ignition key.

That's missing the forest fire for the trees.

-

Funniest road rage I've ever seen was when I was driving down an elliptical road, and two cars split me, engines roaring. One was a taxi, the other was a... Mitsubishi. (Do I get a check for the adclicks generated? And what's with all these Mitsubishi drivers? ) The guy in the Mitsu rolls down his window, shouts across at the taxi driver while waving his hand, and then throws an air freshener at the taxi...

An air freshener. The bloody horror. Nothing scarier than a flimsy tin can filled with perfume hurtling at your (closed) side window.

[wdb]

Originally Posted by UltArc

What?! Stay out of the turbo, EOC, other than some aerodynamic features that might bring it down, an STi could be a great eco (FE) car!

BTDT/GTTS. It netted me a 10% improvement, a couple of MPGs. But it just... felt... wrong. Soul killing. I'm much happier doing the mileage thing in the Fit, and it feels right too.

[order99]

Two years or so ago, some imbecile passed me in a mid-size of some sort(it was night, so make and model unclear) about 30 mph over the speed limit. No big deal, just another fool the cops would catch eventually...

-Until he began slowing down, past even my gas-saving '5 MPH under the speed limit' speed, until I was nearly tailgating him-whereupon the driver then began to slam on his brakes several times in succession, forcing me to do likewise or crash into him! Naturally I slowed down some more...

-And so did the other driver. At this point we are headed down a 55MPH road at 30MPH or so, with the idiot slamming to a nearly full stop every ten seconds or so. Who WAS this lunatic and why was he attempting to force a crash with my helpless little Festiva? Did one bite the fool as a small child or something?

So I pulled out my cellphone and started snapping pictures whenever the driver hit the brakes. Later review of the photos showed a mid-nineties Mercury sedan of indeterminate color (night) and the plate numbers.

Naturally the driver figures out i'm recording and burns rubber away from me...problem solved, conflict aborted.

Not. Two miles later, as I slowed for a light, my windshield was assaulted with a bag of stale fast food and a large soda, nearly causing me to veer into the ditch. The Mercury driver (medium height, broad-shouldered slightly obese, dark swarthy complexion with mustache and receding hairline) had parked his sedan and waited for me-again, WHO WAS THIS NUTJOB? The fast-food assault was followed by screaming in some thick, gutterral language I was completely unfamiliar with, followed by frenzied waving of a tire iron in my direction....

Everybody has their breaking point. This was mine. I fumbled in the darkness for the first rigid unyielding object I could find my-tire iron being in the trunk where it belonged-and vaulted out of my seat with pure, seething intent-

At which point the screaming lunatic with the deadly weapon, easily twice my mass and probably more experienced in a fight, screamed like a little girl, ran back to his car and took off like the Legions of the Damned were after him, smashing one headlight into a traffic sign and missing some poor woman in a VW Golf by inches.

Okay, that was NOT the reaction I expected, so I looked down to see if I had magically turned into Godzilla or something-and was visually reminded that I had just purchased a beautiful 'new to me' chainsaw at the flea market that afternoon.

Oh.

I gave it a pull-it started up on the first try. And here the owner had thought it needed a new starter!

The Sheriff's deputy thought it was pretty funny (I suppose it was in retrospect, at that) and asked me half-jokingly if I had any more 'deadly weapons' at hand. I just pointed to the Ukulele I had also purchased that day and allowed him to draw his own conclusions about its implied deadliness.

I never did find out who that horse's ass was...the car turned out to have been reported stolen. Guess i'll never know.

[Fat Charlie]

That was entirely uncalled for. I just had to clean coffee off my monitor!

[wdb]

Originally Posted by order99

[...] Everybody has their breaking point. This was mine. I fumbled in the darkness for the first rigid unyielding object I could find my-tire iron being in the trunk where it belonged-and vaulted out of my seat with pure, seething intent- [...]

Just as long as you remembered to set the handbrake.