Driving on the road is dangerous enough. Add short-tempered drivers to the mix and it can be downright terrifying. One wrong move can set off anyone close enough to the edge already. We’ve all been guilty of a little road rage, but these drivers reveal the moment they saw a squabble between two drivers turn into something much more serious.
All stories are edited for clarity.
In A Flash
“A guy in a Tahoe was intentionally blocking two lanes of traffic during rush hour. He was trying to get in the turning lane but decided to hold up everyone else in the process.
The guy he was wedged in front of honked at him and held his hand out of his window in frustration. In response, the guy in the Tahoe rolled down his window and said some choice words before rolling up his window again.
The other guy shook his head but decided to patiently wait for the light to change.
When the light turned green, instead of moving, the man driving the Tahoe decided to take things up a notch. In a petty display of events, the Tahoe waved as he remained stationary just to piss everyone off. Everyone in the lane started blowing down the man once they saw he still hadn’t moved. The man waiting in the car in front of him rolled down his window and cursed out the driver again.
This time, the driver of the Tahoe rolled down the window and revealed the barrel of a gun. From the inside of my car I heard the muffled startled screams of the other car in front of me. I was in the second-turn lane watching everything go down. The guy in the Tahoe then tried to speed off.
I jumped into action. I got my phone, dialed 911, and decided I was going to follow the asshole.
We both ran the light. I described everything to the operator as I stayed in hot pursuit. The guy didn’t even know I was following him for a while. It was after we both ran another red light that the driver got the clue.
I was shocked to see how he fled the exact path I drove home almost every day.
The driver then turned into my neighborhood and turned down a dead end. I stopped at the end of the block and waited for him to come out. Once the driver came out, I watched as he turned down another dead end and pulled into a random driveway.
By then, the cops caught up to us and had all of them out at gunpoint. I told the operator I needed to get them home, so they had me give them all my information before leaving the cops to take care of everything.
Later I was told that they searched the truck but found no gun whatsoever. However, later that evening, someone called the cops from the neighborhood and said they found a gun in their front yard. Apparently, the prints matched someone in the Tahoe.
About 2 weeks later, I received a call from a detective. He said when I lost sight of them at the first dead end, they claimed they switched drivers or something like that. Because I lost sight and had no positive idea of the person who pulled the weapon, they couldn’t prosecute anyone in the Tahoe on the road rage incident.
But the two of them were felons and both had prints on the gun so they got locked up soon after.”
Sucker Punch
“One day I dropped my brother off at the bank. As I was pulling out of the parking lot, a guy in a truck flew pulled in like a bat out of hell. He came to a screeching halt as he missed my car by inches.
Enraged, I finished pulling out and rolled down my window. ‘Moron! Learn how to drive!’ I yelled before slowly approaching the turn to take me to the main road.
My words appeared to visibly upset the driver of the truck. Leaving his vehicle in the middle of the driveway, the man got out of his truck and came running over to my car as I was waiting to turn.
Once he got up to my window, he immediately started to call me every curse word there was. I sat in my vehicle just watching him. When he saw I wasn’t fazed, he continued cursing at me and jabbing his finger in my face through the window.
‘You wanna say that again?’ the man threatened.
‘You’re the one who almost hit me back there!’ I snapped.
Then without warning, the man cocked his arm back and punched me square in the jaw.
Infuriated, I immediately got out of my car. As soon as I stood up, the man took a step back once he realized I stood over him by a foot and outweighed him by at least fifty pounds. The man took several steps back before he started swinging at me. I stood watching the man fight the air because he didn’t land a single punch after that. As soon as I saw an opening, I threw a couple back and nailed him in the temple on both sides of the head.
The man lost his balance and stumbled as he tried to cover his head. I was just about to throw a kick to his knee when a screaming woman jumped in front of me. She held her hands up and was frantically speaking in Spanish as she hovered over who I assumed was her husband.
Confused, I looked up and saw the kids watching the whole thing from the back window of the man’s truck. I instantly felt regret as I climbed back into my car and drove off. I’m glad his wife stopped me as I would have likely broken his knee. I felt horrible about doing anything at all after I realized his kids had witnessed the whole thing.
But hey, I was young and he hit me first.”
Instant Karma
“My friend and I were driving home from the store. We were on a two-lane road that merged further down. My friend sped up, flipped on his turn signal, and merged into the lane from a respectable distance in front of a car. Traffic was heavy in the other lane, so we had to brake slightly before accelerating.
We were having a conversation when suddenly a car horn blared at us from behind.
‘Was that for us?’ I asked in disbelief.
‘Seems like it,’ my friend said while glancing in his rearview mirror. As we looked at the man angrily waving his hand at us, we realized the driver was mad because we cut in front of him. We had given him plenty of space, but our gesture pissed him off.
We shrugged it off and proceeded to press on. All the while, the driver behind us continued to blow his horn and follow us at a close distance. It was quite humorous to see the guy make a fool of himself over something so simple.
‘That dude is flailing his hat about and still honking!’ My friend exclaimed. ‘Unbelievable!’
I turned around and saw the guy with his arm out the window like he is trying to wave us down.
Five minutes later we were coming up close to an intersection where the lanes started to open up. We saw a car facing us in the center lane and quickly realized it was an unmarked cop car. The irate driver also eyes the center lane and wants to get next to us to yell at us.
He was still angry and flailing his arms not even realizing what was about to go down. The driver stopped in front of the cop car, and the cop tried to get him to go back into his lane. The driver wasn’t paying attention and swerved to the LEFT of the unmarked car, clearly into the opposite lane, to get around the car and eventually make a left.
I saw the cops in the car make the best ‘WTF’ face and flip the lights and to go after him. My friend and I nearly peed ourselves laughing so hard. Karmic vengeance!”
Picture Perfect
“I had just moved to LA from Florida in 2007. I was driving my early morning commute on the Westside on Sawtelle heading from Pico to Santa Monica.
I pulled up to the light at Pico behind a sky-blue Buick La Sabre. It looked just like one my friend inherited from his grandfather back in Florida. At the time, I thought it would be funny to take a picture of it and email it to my friend. I kept a disposable camera in my car because it was before good cell phone cameras.
As the light changed and we were heading into the intersection I raised the camera up and snapped a picture. Shortly after we crossed the intersection, the driver of the Buick slammed on his brakes and started to get out of his car.
I was very confused and thought he was having an emergency. Then I realized he was glaring right at me. He was a smaller dude dressed from head to toe in all blue. Seeing the look on his face made me want to evaporate in thin air.
Panicking, I swerved into the oncoming lane and punched the gas to go around him. The man saw me trying to get away, so he jumped back in the Buick and floored it. I was going fifty miles an hour down the road with him hot on my ass.
As I was trying to figure out what to do next, I saw a traffic jam piling up at the Santa Monica BLVD intersection. I took a left onto a side street and then a quick right onto another. Meanwhile, the driver of the Buick was right there behind me like the Terminator. He was not letting up.
There was one car waiting to go straight on this road through Santa Monica but they didn’t leave enough room for a car to turn right between them and the curb. In the 2-3 seconds we were stopped there, I saw the driver getting out of the Buick again.
‘Screw this!’ I screamed. Luckily I was in a truck so I drove on the curb and around the car in front of me to avoid the man. My pursuer was stuck, but not for long because the light finally changed. The man was behind me again, only now Santa Monica was moving.
I willed the lights to stay green with enough traffic between me and him that I could ditch him somehow. Thankfully, traffic does open up and we were going about forty miles an hour when he catches up in the lane next to me and yelled out the window, ‘You’re messing with the right one today! I shot up some dude for taking pictures of me last week! Screw you!’
‘I’m sorry,’ I mouthed through my window as I sped towards the nearest U-turn. Once I made it, I looked back and saw he was stuck going straight while I made a lifesaving U-turn and sped away as fast as I can.
All that for taking a picture of his car!”
