This is a story followed by an opinion. Road rage is a terrifying phenomenon. A few years ago, I was driving home on a rural backroad in Maine. An old station wagon pulled over about a quarter mile ahead of me, and so I pulled into the oncoming lane and passed the wagon, which was sitting on the shoulder of the road with no lights on. Nothing out of the ordinary, I thought.
Until headlights appeared in my rearview a few seconds later. The wagon had sped off the shoulder and come up behind me without its lights on, and suddenly his brights were shining in my rearview. He tailgated me incessantly for a few miles, and when it was safe to do so, I pulled over a little bit to let him pass. But he did not. He shut off his lights and continued to follow me closely, flashing his headlights on and off and getting dangerously close to my bumper. This being rural Maine at 11:30 PM (the state closes down around 8, so even though it doesn't sound that late it is) I was a little frightened. I sped up, and the wagon sped up with me; I slowed down, and it slowed down with me. The guy wouldn't let me go.
At this point, we were about five miles from the city limits of the nearest town with a police force. Me being defenseless in a '93 Toyota Tercel (really defenseless: the only thing I had was a large flashlight, and my car was too small to be of any strategic value) I whipped out my cell phone and called 911.
As we entered the city limits, the road widened to two lanes in either direction. I got into the left lane and he got into the right, and no matter what speed I was doing he paced me, periodically leaning out his window and shouting. The 911 dispatcher told me to stay calm, and I told her I would be driving in the direction of the police station. All the while, the wagon man was flashing his lights and shouting and making threatening maneuvers towards me.
After what seemed like an eternity, we rolled up to a stoplight, and there were two Auburn Police Department curisers parked at the light opposite us. 911 called me back, and as the wagon man went flying down a side road, the police took off in hot pursuit.
Never before have I been so scared or so happy to see the police. This incident got me thinking about a lot of things, though. I was a randomly selected victim. I don't know why this man picked me to harass, and I don't know what became of it. But I do know that I was scared.
It made me think about self-defense. If I had had a gun, would it have been ethical or legal* for me to shoot him? What would I have done if he rammed my car, or crashed into me deliberately? What if he had been carrying a gun?
What bothers me the most about all of this is that even if he got arrested, he probably got either a fine or a small jail sentence. People who do this sort of dangerous harrassment deserve harsher punishment. I would like to have seen this man go to jail for upwards of a year, plus fines, plus a permanent suspension of his license and a confiscation of his car. I would like to see him blacklisted from all new and used car dealerships, and restricted from purchasing firearms. Road rage is scary, dangerous, and terrifying. It is nothing short of highway terrorism, and the perpetrators of such a despicable crime should be punished harshly.
*Laws on killing in self-defense vary from state to state. In some Southern states, I could have shot and killed him and probably gotten away with it; in Maine, and especially the rest of New England, it's tricky.
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How scary! I'm glad you made it out of that one safely. And I do agree, we need stricter road rage laws.
http://www.drdriving.org/articles/testimony.htm
Has an interesting article (actually, Congressional testimony) about road rage.
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." -Huxley
"It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err." -Gandhi