Seeing an idiot get their just desserts

[walm]

NRS said:

How is he supposed to see when the car in front is in the way of the view?

Leave a bigger gap. That's the whole point.

(Everything else you wrote I agree with though...)

[NRS]

walm said:

NRS said:

How is he supposed to see when the car in front is in the way of the view?

Leave a bigger gap. That's the whole point.

(Everything else you wrote I agree with though...)

Yes, I do understand that in reality, but no one has been trying to argue he should not have done that, and depending on the angle it can sometimes be hard to see anyway (although you really should be looking further up the road anyway). Again he was an idiot and unsafe driver - but my view is that both were.

[scarble]

NRS said:

Because his vision was obstructed by the car in front. How is he supposed to see when the car in front is in the way of the view? Also he might have been very much aware of the car moving sideways, and since he couldn't see thought the car in front thought it was reacting to a dangerous situation, so followed him to avoid a potential danger.

And in regards to the child - well, what happened to the innocent child(ren) who was in the car that crashed at 60mph into a 1 foot high kerb? Not saying there were any in it, but it's quite likely there was, and they had nothing to do with the poor driving by either person. So do consider that before pulling the "think of the poor children" card,

Er, this is covered in the highway code and the driving test, you can see more if you're further back, also you have more time to react to anything the other car reacts to, or once the other car has passed the obstacle, as there is a gap between the two of you, you've got a chance to spot it, also again.. uhm.. all good drivers will at least try to look through the windows of the car in front (which is why the craze for "privacy glass" and vans in L3 are so annoying )
As for children in the 4x4.. well, that'd be the 4x4 driver's fault
Although I think 1ft was an exaggeration, not to mention big 4x4s tend to bounce over kerbs rather smash into them

[DeltaTango]

Any chance we can move away from this?

[yellowjack]

DeltaTango said:

Any chance we can move away from this?

[RKi]

God some people are so boring....

[sherbertdip]

Ray Luxury-Yacht said:

This isn't connected to motoring, but it IS still beautiful, even now, 25-odd years later...

I was generally well-liked and happy at Secondary School - but I was also a bit of a fat kid (still a fat adult, natch ) and hence, occasionally used to catch the attention of the odd bullying tt. But happily, not for too long or badly enough to upset me...

Anyway, in what we used to call the '4th year' - which was when we were all 14 or 15 with one more year to go - this lad joined our school who had recently moved over from the States...complete with the whole-nine-yards Yank accent and attitude.

For some reason, he decided that he needed to quickly be the 'billy big bks' of the year, the attention-seeking idiot...and hence quickly set his eyes on me as a target for his machismo.

After a few weeks of his annoying banter, and one or two occasions of him throwing stuff at me like apple cores, I was beginning to tire of his bullying, and thinking of giving him a proper slap. For an annoying bully, he was actually a painfully thin and short child (probably why he wanted to 'prove' himself) and so if I had have really lost my temper and piled into him, I am sure he would have ended up fairly battered and bruised. However, I have always been pretty chilled out - and so didn't rise to it.


Anyway - sorry - long story short. One day, I was waiting in the 'tuck shop' line - which was an open hatch in a corridoor, flanked by 3 paines of single-thickness fixed glass windows either side of the hatch - one of which I was standing in front of.

Aforementioned bully walks past, and spies me in the queue. He drops his bag to the floor, walks to the opposite side of the corridoor, bows his head, and runs at me, full speed.

I swiftly see his trajectory, and just take a single large step backwards in the queue of people.

The bully then careers past me, in front of me, at full tilt, right at the place where I WAS standing, but no longer am - all the while blissfully ignorant to the fact that I had moved backwards, due to the fact that he still had his head down...

And yes, he beautifully and justfully then smashed his head, shoulders and torso right through the glass window, orchestrating a monstrously satisfying and noisy breaking of glass, coupled with some nasty lacerations to his face and neck, along with rivers of his fresh blood.

My, how we all laughed. And from that day forward, struggled to come to terms with how someone could be so stupid.

Fortunately for him, he didn't suffer any lasting damage, just a few scars and a massive amount of embarrassment - one the incident had (quickly) got round the whole school.

I never heard from him again after that

Edited by Ray Luxury-Yacht on Monday 5th May 00:34

I didn't think I had anything to contribute to this thread, but that story has just stirred a memory.

Same as you, back in the 4th year our school rugby teams 4th and 5th were always taken to Twickenham to watch a 4 nations rugby game.

Saturday came along and we all went to watch England v Scotland.

As we were milling around outside twickers there were lots of pissed up supporters, one in particular a middle aged (well probably 40ish) gnarly, red nosed, ginger haired Scot in full pantomime dress decided to give us some verbal. Now i wasn't a particularly large potential company director then, and goatie beards were reserved for goats, but my mate Keith even at 15 was a big lad, and coming from rough South Yorkshires mining villages we weren't particularly scared of this bloke in a skirt, so we both had a laugh at him, literally!

This inflamed his passionate anti-English themed drunken ranting even more, he backed away from us, lowered his head and charged at us, we looked at each other and both took a step backwards allowing him to charge between us - straight into what i can only describe as an RSJ planted vertically in the concrete (twickers wasn't a posh stadium in the late 70's), his head struck metal with a dull thud and down he went, his skirt flowing up over his bare arse with his bks on display, my god a crowd of laughing school children soon gathered around him as he rolled over wondering what had hit him.

Served the pissed anti-English bully right!

[Dr Jekyll]

sherbertdip said:

This inflamed his passionate anti-English themed drunken ranting even more, he backed away from us, lowered his head and charged at us, we looked at each other and both took a step backwards allowing him to charge between us - straight into what i can only describe as an RSJ planted vertically in the concrete (twickers wasn't a posh stadium in the late 70's), his head struck metal with a dull thud and down he went, his skirt flowing up over his bare arse with his bks on display, my god a crowd of laughing school children soon gathered around him as he rolled over wondering what had hit him.

Served the pissed anti-English bully right!

...and then he gave up Rugby and went into politics.

[VeeDubBigBird]

Loving the stories so far, I've always wondered though if the idiots involved ever learn from their mistakes or just carry on acting like a c**k.

I've got a few stories but my favourite was from the work place. During the bad storms in Scotland a few years ago, i phoned in to say i could make it to work. two days later i went in and was called in to a meeting with my manager and the department manager to explain why i couldn't make it.

The fact that my manager had crashed into her neighbours wall trying to reverse out of her driveway, and the department managers leg was in a cast after breaking it trying to get to her car made it hard for them to argue against (they still tried).

[cathalferris]

Very interesting to read the responses on here. Thanks for the support from those that saw the realities of the situation. Typical to see some people make mistakes on possible responsibilities though, still makes for a good debate and a good read.

As for those that think that I was dangerous? In what way am I responsible for the driving of someone behind me? I did not give any misleading signals (wrong indicators, brake testing etc) to the driver to the rear, nor did I do anything dangerous with my own driving. I kept my speed fairly constant, and I kept my steering inputs gentle and correct for the shape of the road i.e. not weaving on the road. I should have been more accurate in my description of the event and not called it a swerve, but I hadn't anticipated the analysis that some have put on the description of the situation (silly me, this is PH after all ). My driving would have attracted absolutely no notice from instructors, police etc other than my avoidance of the stationary obstruction in the road, and at that it wasn't actually that abrupt at all - my tyres didn't complain. It's not my issue at all that the idiot behind was incapable of driving safely and had no clue about the oncoming road. At no time did I obviously react to the idiot behind me as that would qualify as goading or inciting. I just drove... Another clarification - the kerb was part of a traffic island with a curved front and a long angle that deflects traffic further to the left, so the 4x4's trajectory would not have encountered oncoming traffic. Any damage to the 4x4 would have been completely his own fault and there's absolutely no excuse for any attempt to offload blame to me given that I've no responsibility for the 4x4's driving, and if he had been driving correctly he wouldn't have had such a short time to react to anything.

If the muppet behind has no situational awareness as to what's going on then they shouldn't be behind the wheel of any sort of vehicle. I have no way of knowing how much visibility or reaction time that the driver to my rear has, nor is it of any responsibility of mine as long as I am driving correctly and safely. How do you think that the muppet to my rear would have reported any damage to the relevant insurance company? " I was driving too close to the car in front and I couldn't see where I was going when oopsie I hit something stationary in the road?" I don't think that the insurance company would be receptive to that idiot's behaviour. All that the idiot to my rear needed to do was to drop back and they would then have had normal visibility of the road ahead and I wouldn't have been as blinded.

Yes, the driver to my rear was behaving in a way to attempt to intimidate and use a vehicle as a possible weapon. How would I modify my behaviour these days after becoming another 15 years older and a lot of mileage later if the same thing happened again? Easy enough - I'd use a mobile phone to call the local police station via the emergency number, and request assistance as soon as possible. I wouldn't pull over or stop to leave that driver past as I have no way of knowing the mental state of a driver that is already behaving super-aggressively - and pulling over will only give an opportunity for that driver to directly interact with me and I will try to avoid any situation that would give that opportunity, for my own safety. At least when that idiot driver is behind me there are much fewer ways that they can interact with me and that's safer for me. I did not have a mobile phone at the time so I could not have made the call that I would now.

Not proud of the situation, but it was probably the safest outcome for me. I don't get intimidated, but I am usually very situation-aware (training from the extreme kayaking and half a million miles of issue-free driving) and able to see possibilities of the road situations as they happen. As for a lesson learned, well that 4x4 did eventually continue on the road behind me after the fright that they gave themselves but this time keeping a nice 4-5 seconds back before turning off a few tens of miles later, so it's safe to assume that the lesson was learned without any great harm done.