ignore vs speak

can't imagine this will produce much, but this is the venue to
see i guess:

i was driving with my two year old in the back seat [of my minivan]
and i noticed a cyclist coming from behind about 30yards/meters back.
domestic me, i wait in my big blue bath toy--not wanting to second
guess the largely erratic moves of our good city's bike couriers.

this guy gets close to my window and shouts at me as if i almost ran him
over--not worth paraphrasing, you get the idea[challenging tones]. what set me off was the
inordinate amount of time i already invested in placating this fookwit.
unfortunately i momentarily forgot my son in the back seat as i verbally
exploaded out a frame of referrence that was to be an altercation [what
a fragile beast man is--i was incensed enough to get out of my car...just
because i'd tried to be nice and was now being punked].

my fears suddenly surrounded my son in the back seat, and heaps of
trouble surrounding a potentially negligent scene--to include the double parked
van.

i naturally drove on--but even then slowly, giving the universe one last chance to
allow him to follow me if he was so inclined.
what made me so angry and committed. i think it was my verbal response--so connected
to my fence drills. it simply isn't the common man's bluff in my head. it is the hint of
all the seems coming loose.

what i learned is that perhaps what would have satisfied me was 'sending him to coventry'.
simply completely ignorring the fooker--maybe even until things went wrong. the thing about
under-reacting to people, it's a nice inner wind-up, it's not going to prematurely commit one to
anything. it's a chance to allow doubt and annoyance to enter
their collective pee brains, while not making the final cash payment until 'we're ready for
count down...in three...two...one...blast off'.

i made a mistake...and mistakes are for learning. [trying to] now, ignore the pricks, let their shite wind me up if there is no end to it--then the predictable fight, but otherwise see about trying not to match wits with the witless. and see if i can't let them walk away with the poo still in their mouths.

to paraphrase one of my teachers. the students makes a mistake once, then learns from it. the idiot
makes the same mistake again and again.

it was eye opening, i was on the cusp of watching myself about to go--and over nothing. i still think he
deserved to be rammed into one of the cars he was posturing next to, but timing is everything--and i
think i was perhaps in the pre-pre-pre-emptive state

ahhh yes. Over the past 4 years I've probably spent at least 5 hours a day in traffic itself due to work.

I've had this kind of thing happen countless times with other drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. I've gotten back in their face, tried to stay calm and reason with them, tried to ignore them completely.... all of the above... all with mixed results and the usual me still feeling angry afterwards. Until I decided to try something new... it might have been your suggestion in another post and I think i remember seeing Richie say something about it in a vid... but it was actiually laughing and mocking the hell out of the aggressor that worked the best.

When I did this I had another driver giving me some verbal theats along with the middle finger etc etc. He looked a fair bit bigger than me, but for whatever reason I decided to mock him. I puckered my lower lip and rubbed my eyes in am immitation of a baby crying and went "waaaah waaaah ... traffic sooo cruel!!"

and he didn't know what to do. I drove away laughing my head off and he sat there not knowing what to do.

Aha ...this thread also links nicely to what I just wrote on the image projection thread!
The last section ....

What I've found works nicely is smiling whilst wiggling my little finger at them ... as in this is the size of yours ....

at the risk of total hypocrisy from a man who only last month got a shouty sweary cob on because an old man turned a corner slower than rally speed and inconvenienced him by fractions of a second (I didnt swear at the old man, I had my windows up, but I did get disproportionately emotional )

Cars are interesting places, I think we all kind of slip into a trance in them... you only have to notice the number of girls who will openly squeeze spots whilst in public car parks and men who will pick their noses at traffic lights in them, its like we think we are "at home", invisible, doing things in a bubble of non consequence

Cars also afford indulgences simply not taken in a pedestrian setting... funny what people will say and do when they are speeding away at 40 miles an hour in a metal box... different things than they would say and do whilst walking

They are also stressful places for most people. I personally like driving and had to drive professionally (taxi and chauffeur) for a time so Im used to driving in a lot of conditions to deadlines. But I notice when talking to people as they drive that its NOT a totally unconscious skill for them and that driving takes up a lot of RAM in their onboard computer. The more RAM being taken up the more stress they will feel.

So basically you are putting people in a situation where they are dopey/trancey, a bit too cocky and stressed all at the same time. Happy combo!

Its an effect that hits cyclists too, Ive had cyclists gob off at me a couple of times in London for driving too close to them, but what can you do?

Therefore when it comes to road rage, all bets are off, nothing counts and you must be more compassionate than Buddha, more patient than Ghandi and kinder than Mother Theresa.

Its nothing personal, its just people venting.

My mantra for road rage "you are just a peice of information in my reality tunnel now"

Remember the beginning of this post? Yeah, sometimes I forget that mantra

But in answer to Russ's question: always choose to Ignore

Unless its serious and in all the years of driving in mad conditions: spain, greece, portugal (some of the highest death rate in europe for car accidents) Ive never seen anything serious come of road rage UNLESS people get out of their cars and then they can get stabbed/ stomped to death.

Drive on. Dont get out of the car over a a bit of face pulling and chest beating. You might get battered or you might batter someone as a result. Neither leads to a happy productive stress free life.

Do nothing, say nothing. State management.

Anyway you never know when you might get that random nutcase or gang member initiation... yeah we get loads of latin street king shootings in the leafy village I live in

Richie said///
"So basically you are putting people in a situation where they are dopey/trancey, a bit too cocky and stressed all at the same time. Happy combo!"

and

"Therefore when it comes to road rage, all bets are off, nothing counts and you must be more compassionate than Buddha, more patient than Ghandi and kinder than Mother Theresa."

nice point...it's an actual test worth anticipating, and i've been sort of not thinking of it as any test
at all--hence i suppose my inexperience to my rise in temperature. i like to drive too, but i guess lately
i've had more family, dialogues, radio station turning requests, etc... i wouldn't have thought it was affecting me because i used to drive enormous road trips [to NC; to Chicago; to Upstate NY]. i'm going
to take a stab at adding to all that mental jumble, i'm used to zoning and seeing the world like a great
video game behind the wheel. i love to drive, and perhaps appreciate the time to think more than i am
willing to admit. so maybe this degenerate became a sort of, "okay, that's it...come here you twat, you
belong to me now--i'm taking you home".

"My mantra for road rage "you are just a peice of information in my reality tunnel now"

i can add this to my list of mantras ...it's a good one to remember--that and the whole controling
one's states thingy.

"Anyway you never know when you might get that random nutcase "

we actually get a fair amount of these--some that need help, and some that have that little 'outpatient'
wrist band that stands for when doctors sort of looked at each other and winked and said, "erm, you are free to be someone elses problem now". i think that's alot of the minor problematic tensions that exist over here. there's this weird vibe that has come out of the working class--enabled by the liberal class.
the metaphor sort of looks like this:
bob punches greg in the mouth
greg [the liberal] spits blood onto bob's shoe by accident, whilst in shock
bob then said, "look what the fook you just did--those shoes are new"
[here's the tricky part]
greg says, "i'm sorry, you're right, it's me...it's all me"

i think the syndrom started from fraidy-cats, but has insidiously infiltrated--like some inverse hegemony,
into the general population. now everyone buys the lie. it's weird. some of my spots of bother happen because i'm the outsider saying, "what the fook are you talking about?"

BTW...Dave..." "waaaah waaaah ... traffic sooo cruel!!"

that's hysterical...if i'm feeling weak, i'm going to use that--you know i will. otherwise, i'm aiming at ignoring