road rage

Last night we had a pretty scary experience on the roads that I thought I'd share. We were on our way to my brother-in-law's for dinner and a birthday party and we were driving down a rural freeway (I use that term loosely...technically, it's a freeway, but it has occasional stop signs and traffic lights, and it's only one lane both ways.) Anyway, about halfway to our destination, I realized I'd forgotten the birthday present. We knew we'd be late if we turned around, but that was the point of the whole evening, so Dan flipped around and waited on a side road to head back onto the freeway.

Now since I wasn't driving, I wasn't looking, but presumably, Dan found an opportunity to pull out and started to do so. Unfortunately, our car slid on the gravel for a few seconds, slowing his entrance into traffic by several seconds. The way he was flooring the gas made me aware that there must be someone pretty close behind us, and sure enough, within seconds, a car sped past us and back into our lane, barely missing an oncoming car by a mere second.

Whoa...we discussed briefly how he had just about caused a really bad accident, when the very offended driver now in front of us gave us a not-so-nice signal using his right hand. Understandable, we'd cut him off, not on purpose of course, but I'm sure the incident had gotten his heart rate going too. Well seconds after that he full on slammed on his breaks, causing us to do so and scaring the daylights out of everyone in our car as all our belongings went flying. The guy then sped up, moving forward, as we proceeded on this rural freeway.

By now the kids were upset, and so was I, realizing that this guy was not only ticked off, but ticked off to the point that he would have sacrificed his own car had we slammed into him. As we got within three miles of our turn off, I warned Dan to keep his distance from this guy--who knows what the crazy man was thinking. I even suggested that he pull off the freeway and take a side road so we'd be far from him. (He didn't.)

Well our exit approached and my heart leaped into my throat as this guy pulled off onto the same exit. We warily followed him to a point, and then up ahead I saw a dreaded site. A stop sign. Danny kept his distance as the crazy man stopped at the intersection. The man stopped and waited. And kept waiting, obviously waiting for us to catch up. We were a good 50 yards behind, and the only other traffic was a car coming the opposite way. There was no obvious need for Crazy Man to wait at the stop.

Then, the guy's reverse lights turned on and he started to back up quickly towards us!! Full on alert and before the guy could do any damage, Danny illegally passed to the left, sped up and through the stop sign, and took us home via an alternate path.

My pulse is racing just typing this! I was soooo afraid! Who knows what the guy was thinking? Was he going to ram right into us?? Was he going to get out and yell or beat us up or did he have a gun?! It was absolutely one of the craziest experiences I've been through and it took me quite some time to calm down.

Now I'm terrified to drive our van around town because it appears he lives somewhere nearby (at least we use the same exit off the freeway) and in total fear of this crazy guy with the road rage. It's all I could think about last night too. I'm glad we made it home safe and sound and of course we got the present and went back on the freeway towards the birthday party. But whewww....crazy night.