EDITOR – We have all heard stories of road rage.
On my way to work the other day, I witnessed an incident of road rage and it was very disturbing to say the least.
When you travel the same route to work day-in-day-out at the same time most mornings, other cars and their occupants became familiar, as well as the different motorbike or scooter riders.
You learn which people will most definitely overtake and which ones are quite happy to keep to the speed limit. A gentleman on a yellow scooter was one of the familiar drivers who was always quite happy to pull over to allow cars to get ahead, and I never found him a problem on the road, but obviously someone that morning did.
He went through the traffic lights ahead of me, followed by a car. I noticed it had a woman' s name on the number plate. The lights changed and I stayed put. I therefore never witnessed what actually happened to warrant what I saw further down the road. As the lights turned green I carried on my way, past Kingsway Hospital when I had to slow down to nearly a stop because of the road rage happening in the middle of the road in front of me.
The driver of the car, with the woman's name on the number plate, pulled over on to the verge, flew out of his door, ran into the middle of the road and tried to kick and punch yellow scooter driver off his bike, shouting and screaming at him. Luckily, the scooter driver managed to get away and naturally upset, wobbled his way down the road. The car driver got back in, I could get past and carry on my now very upset way to work.
As I said before, I was not a witness to what happened to incite the motorist into such a rage, but really was your performance necessary. Normally a loud blast on the car hooter and even a rude finger out the window will suffice, but road rage to the extent where you could have caused serious bodily harm to the scooter driver.
I will now be keeping an eye open for that number plate again and will make sure I keep a very wide berth just in case.
ANNE ATOS
