Wondering the RIGHT way to handle this....

[hbridge]

This did NOT happen to me and I did not see what caused this to happen...

I was driving into a shopping plaza and the car coming the other ways stopped in the middle of the road and the driver got out of his car, went to the car behind him and started yelling at the woman driving the car behind him. He was gesturing and yelling; holding up traffic in both directions. After about 3 minutes he got back into his car and drove away. I was going in the other direction and passed the woman. Her window was rolled up or I would have asked if she was okay...

The woman was alone, but the man had a child in the backseat who witnessed all of this.

I have absolutely NO BACKGROUND information, but would I assume that the woman made some sort of driving error and he "road raged" with it. This is something that I can see happening to me and wonder what the correct way to handle it would be when a man gets out of his car and starts screaming at you. I would have been terrified!

Is there a right way to handle this? This is a fairly busy shopping plaza so I am surprised there was no involvement by some form of security.

What is the "correct" response?

I have no other back ground since I just happened upon this as the man stopped his car in the middle of the road and got out...

[SnuggleBuggles]

Someone did that to me once. No one helped. A few people did ask after if I was ok. Situations like that are so hard to figure out how to process quickly enough. I’m glad everything ended safely.


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[mmsmom]

Sadly, in today’s world where you never know who has a gun I don’t think there is anything you can do as a bystander except call police. It is just not worth the risk to get involved. If it is happening to you I think the best thing to do is to not engage the person in any way; don’t fight back, say as little as possible- just say sorry and drive away. Call the police when you are in a safe place if the person was threatening you.

[TwinFoxes]

If it happened to me I'd call 911 and give his license plate number. He's lucky he didn't get arrested for child endangerment. I assume he left the kid in a running car? I'm surprised no one called the police if he was really yelling for three minutes. I've called cops on a fight and they arrived pretty quickly, way less than three minutes. Maybe someone did and the cops never came.

[petesgirl]

If it happened to me I'd call 911 and give his license plate number. He's lucky he didn't get arrested for child endangerment. I assume he left the kid in a running car? I'm surprised no one called the police if he was really yelling for three minutes. I've called cops on a fight and they arrived pretty quickly, way less than three minutes. Maybe someone did and the cops never came.

I agree, I would have called the cops.

[div_0305]

Exact same thing happened to me --at least a couple times. No one helped, but many stared. Both times, the men did not realize they were wrong, but it didn't matter. You can't reason with rage. One man didn't realize he turned into my lane from a 2 left lane turn. He was yelling that I gave him no room to drive and almost hit him. When I said he turned into my lane and I had to slam my breaks to not hit him, he started yelling obscenities, including racial ones. I rolled up my window and started recording him with my phone in case anything were about to happen. That stopped him. The other time, the man did not realize he didn't have the right of way at an intersection, so he sped up to block my way, and then when I tried to get around him, he kept moving his car to block me. He was yelling a lot of obscene things and this was at a busy shopping plaza. No one cared, despite lots of other cars waiting their turns at the intersection and who could see what he was doing. Why does it always seem to be men? In my area, I see that they don't pay attention to merging lanes or other road markings.

Another man a couple weeks ago would not stop honking at me for not proceeding on a red light--he stupidly assumed it was a right turn only lane, instead of looking up at the sign next to the light which it was for both turning and going straight--which was the direction I was headed. 2 minutes of honking and hand gestures. I wanted to get him to read the sign, but not sure how I could have done that safely and without engaging with crazy. I thought at least a car in the next lane over could tell him to look up, but nope.

[NCGrandma]

Another man a couple weeks ago would not stop honking at me for not proceeding on a red light--he stupidly assumed it was a right turn only lane, instead of looking up at the sign next to the light which it was for both turning and going straight--which was the direction I was headed. 2 minutes of honking and hand gestures. I wanted to get him to read the sign, but not sure how I could have done that safely and without engaging with crazy. I thought at least a car in the next lane over could tell him to look up, but nope.

This is my personal favorite! Fortunately I haven’t experienced as lengthy or aggressive reactions but have gotten lots of honks. I’m sure they were thinking "that old lady doesn’t know you can turn right on red..."

A related — and much more frequent— occurrence here: over the past couple of years, a lot of intersections around here have been turned into roundabouts. On one near me, most people take a particular exit/road from the roundabout but a few people continue on to the next road. I *always* wait until there are no cars coming before pulling into the roundabout between these 2 roads. And I almost always get honked at!! Occasionally I feel vindicated when a car goes in front of me while the guy behind me is honking (and yeah, it’s a guy...).


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[specialp]

Sadly, in today’s world where you never know who has a gun I don’t think there is anything you can do as a bystander except call police. It is just not worth the risk to get involved. If it is happening to you I think the best thing to do is to not engage the person in any way; don’t fight back, say as little as possible- just say sorry and drive away. Call the police when you are in a safe place if the person was threatening you.

Agree. Whether you are the target or a bystander, there is nothing you can say or do to deescalate the situation when there is that much rage. No eye contact, do not engage, make sure you know your location and direction so you can communicate it, and get your phone ready to call 911 (not to record, but to call for help.) Call when something moves from "this is awkward" to "I'm scared" which, for me, would've been the second he got out of his car or after it lasted so long. I've been on the receiving end and witnessed it, but the aggressor never got out of the car and it didn't last 3 minutes. So glad it ended up okay!

[Globetrotter]

It’s easy to say this now and I honestly don’t know what I would do in the heat of the moment, but probably the best thing to do is to not engage with the person but try to get a recording of the conversation if you can and see if there’s any way you can get the license plate and report him later. I wouldn’t engage with anyone like that because nowadays you never know who has a gun.

If any of us observe something like this as a bystander, probably the best thing to do is to quietly take a video or at least audio of it and take a picture of the license plate or at least write it down.

[bisous]

Sadly, in today’s world where you never know who has a gun I don’t think there is anything you can do as a bystander except call police. It is just not worth the risk to get involved. If it is happening to you I think the best thing to do is to not engage the person in any way; don’t fight back, say as little as possible- just say sorry and drive away. Call the police when you are in a safe place if the person was threatening you.

Yes to this. Several years ago DH witnessed a fatal stabbing. He saw a domestic dispute outside our (very nice) apartment complex. A good samaritan intervened and the guy pulled a knife on him and he died. I do think calling the authorities is the only thing you can safely do.