Did I do anything wrong?

[adalex]

I was heading back to my apartment from furniture shopping and this happed -.-. It was on this past black Friday and I realized I shouldn't have rolled down my window but as you can hear I never cussed or raised my voice or anything since I'm not a very confrontational person but it really bothered me since I've never had a random person threaten me like that before so it really shook me up :/. What do you guys think?

Keep in mind the traffic light to my left when I stopped before turning on to the main road is red for north and south bound traffic
This was recorded on a a118 before I switched to the SG9665GC the main video is from 1 minute in to 3 mins

 

[Rajagra]

He must have been annoyed that you moved into the middle lane in front of him. But eight seconds passed between you doing that and him appearing doing his angry revving act.
Conclusion: he was looking for a reason to be indignant, he thinks the road is his playground where nobody else should get in the way, and he's a terrible rider who can't react sensibly even with eight seconds warning.

 

[DrEskimo]

The only thing I can think of is your position on the motorway. Here in the UK you always keep Left (obviously would be right for you guys) unless you are overtaking. Typically refer to drivers that sit in the middle lane when the other lanes are clear as lane loggers....

Obviously that is completely redundant if you have different road layouts and rules over there!

There really is no need for so much hostility though. The guy wasn't revving at you until a good while after you pulled out so could easily go around you and get one with his day....

 

[bhamguy]

Don't know if you did anything to get him fired up, but he sounded like one of societies real winners to me and you are nicer than most for not responding and escalating the situation.

Random sidebar - You mentioned if you had your concealed carry permit you could have pulled your weapon and pointed it at the ground to get his to back off. As good of an idea as that may sound, be careful as that could fall under brandishing laws and get you into big time hot water even if you don't point or discharge your weapon at the other person.

 

[flank]

My guess is that you are driving a Lexus which is super quiet inside and didn't hear him coming down in a blink of an eye at 70mph.

Or he was doing a wheeling and you didn't see any headlights from that direction.

Either way, you probably did cut in front of him and set him off

 

[Rajagra]

I suspect he's one of those guys who thinks he can do what he likes and others have to accommodate him.

Like this guy:

 

[adalex]

Yeah I know I mentioned concealed weapon granted I don't have one and never fired one but I was just talking out loud and was basically saying like if he dismounted and walked over and reached in the car. If he was just cussing I obviously wouldn't do anything. And I actually have a 99 camry 4cyl and Idk where he came from since the north and south traffic was stopped and somehow I "cut him off" with 2 completely empty lanes to my left. Oh and not sure if anyone caught it but when the light turned green he sped up and popped a wheelie and sped off. Granted I would have felt much better if there was a cop on the other side turning right as he did the wheelie but oh well I read that down here that a first offense citation for a wheelie on public streets is now $1,000. A third offense is a felony punishable by a $2,500 fine and forfeiture of drivers license for 10 years.

 

[ThePro]

Don't worry too much about it, people like those will either not live too long or will have a lesson learned.

 

[kamkar]

I can sort of understand bikers as they are pretty vulnerable on their crotch rockets, but then again no one forced them to drive one, so even with all things beeing equal and good drivers everywhere the bikers is still at a disadvantage.
So i would assume all bikers are aware of this issue and therefore being extremely careful on the roads, but we all know thats not how it is with many bikers we encounter on the roads.
Anyway with that pimped up crotch rocket i would find it hard to take him serious even if he was in my face, had it been me in a rental car as i tourist i would have spoken to him and alternating between Danish and German and English just to freak him out

 

[Rajagra]

I rarely have grief with (motor) bikers, they mostly have their heads screwed on. Even when I do it's down to bad judgement and they correct it when they realise they are in danger.
I've only seen this revving in anger in YT videos. And every time the riders were being childish and were the ones who created the situation in the first place.
Why don't they use their horns? Do they think they are impressing anyone by wrecking their engines?? Do they think they are intimidating people?

 

[kamkar]

Some old guy on a Harley whent ballistic on me a "fjew" years back, the reason is i was playing my radio too loud for his liking, and we are talking the stock radio of my 2006 Suzuki gran viatra.
Okay i did have the windows in the front doors open about 1/3, but still ??? he should have heard my old setup in the Opel, that would have made the sound of his harley disappear.
His problem was i was in a foul mood, my other problem was i was hitting a old man with a helmet on ( note to self dont do that again )

 

[mollydog]

I loved how cool calm and collected you were, in fact I got so carried away with your conversation with your lady friend (wife) that I had to re run the clip to see what the biker was up to ,

the best part was you letting him speed off in to the night when the lights changed, people like that are best kept in front of you so you can avoid them like the plague.

short of you pulling right in front of him (which I doubt very much happened, due to the time it took him to make his presents known to you) if he had time to rev the nuts off his bike, it couldn’t of been that close a call at all if he had time to sit behind/to the side of you to rev the bike.

in my opinion, if this should happen again, don’t open your window look at them and give an acknowledgement wave then look away no mater what, don’t engage in a conversation with these nutters, you will NEVER win, and don’t make any more eye contact with him/her again just look ahead of you or to your passenger till the lights change and just drive off slowly, as more often than not, people like him want to prove just how powerful their bike/car is compared to what you have

One thing I do like about our highway code here in the UK, is that you keep to the near side lane on dual lane or with two or more lanes for traffic, unless overtaking or traffic is splitting left and right, and one can only overtake on the out side lane(s) unless the out side lane is moving slower than near side lane in slow moving traffic

now having said all that, I am a bit worried about your lady friend when at the end she says “where are we” in a kinda lost sounding voice

 

[Gibson99]

i didn't watch the entire thing - stopped it once the biker started yelling at you after rolling down the window, well before the light turned green. wonder if he was high on something.

as for the folks saying stay right... well, you were coming up on an intersection and i assumed you probably didn't want to be in the right-turn-only lane. i didn't look for right-only signs, i'm just assuming that's why you got out of the right lane. that or you were planning on turning left after a short distance. but i agree that you had been in that lane a LONG time before he came up next to you and started revving. yet another reason i think he may have been on something.

i'm familiar with how underpowered the 97-01 camry with the 4cyl engine is, especially with an auto. but it's generally a pretty quiet car. i have a 98 camry with the v6 (and a 5spd manual) myself. it's not lexus quiet, but it's comfy. very good highway cruiser. after driving my new (to me) tacoma x-runner for a week, driving the camry feels like riding in a boat - its suspension is SO much softer, even though both the camry and the x-runner have about the same amount of miles on them (camry has 151k, XR has 142k).

 

[adalex]

I don't know about cool and collected lol I was shaking as I said I've never had a perfect stranger randomly threaten me before let alone just casually threaten to bread my windows. I couldn't tell if he had two but he did have at least one ear bud that I could see go up under his helmet. Oh and the woman next to me is my 60 year old mom I just turned 29 on the 20th of this month I was going through multiple scenarios in my head about what I should do if he started smashing my windows about what I would have to do at that point. Granted legal matters aside I would have taken out his bike so he couldn't speed off. Cause at that point I basically fear for my life but want him to be caught. He can't go anywhere if my car is sitting on his bike

 

[Rajagra]

I just turned 29 on the 20th of this month

At least the biker guessed your age pretty close.
He seemed to have an issue with the fact that you were "old". That probably says a lot about him.

I didn't catch the bit where he threatened to break your windows before. Any thoughts you had about defending yourself or deterring him were fully justified.

Word of advice: if you're going to wind down your window put it down all the way. It's easier to break in a half-way position.

 

[Aero]

May be opening the window was a good thing, it let him blow of steam, amazing you kept your cool .

One thing, I would never get away with using language like that in front of my mother

 

[adalex]

He mentioned the windows at the 2:13 mark. And I actually did roll the window all the way down and if you put the volume all the way up on youtube you can hear him. You can't see him that well but you can hear him perfectly.

 

[adalex]

Gibson- Don't know if you remembered but this is adalex from the TN forums I talked to you when I saw your accident and that's what got me in to the dash cams . In retrospect I just should have gone right at the light just to avoid him and gone around since we were furniture shopping and there was a store straight past the overpass.

 

[The Civic Mechanic]

Okay. I need to talk about several things. First, its hard to tell but it looks like you just merged into his lane going slower than him. A good habit is to just turn into the nearest lane, match traffic speed, THEN merge. It helps provide cars room in case you didn't see someone and it annoys people when drivers merge at a slower pace than traffic. Now I'm gonna talk about what each could've done differently.

Biker: The road is much more dangerous for bikers and certain situations are deadlier to them than cars. As a result, some riders will lose their temper. However, there is no need to start a confrontation over a car merging at slow speed. Angry revs and arm gesture is pushing the line but a confrontation at a red-light is dangerous and unnecessary. If you're going to tell a driver his mistakes then don't insult him or he'll just be focused on the fact that you've insulted him. Otherwise just take a deep breath and move on.

Driver: It looks like you merged into his lane going slower than him. A good way to avoid incidents like this is to just turn into the nearest lane and match speed with traffic before merging. Its nothing to beat yourself over, just an honest mistake. You handled the biker's road rage well. I would've told the biker off pretty quickly because I couldn't stand being cussed at like that.

It was a mistake that isn't worth much thought and definitely wasn't worth the verbal abuse.

 

[Rajagra]

The rider spent at least four seconds not looking where he was heading because he was eyeballing the driver. I'm certain that that put him in far more danger than anything the driver did.
It seemed to me to be an empty road. Biker turned up some time after the (admittedly sloppy) lane change. Possibly going way too fast and annoyed that an unpredictable driver was not holding position so he had to slow to a sensible speed before overtaking. Boo hoo.

Would love to have seen rear camera footage here.

IMO biker was in an excellent situation, three lanes and only one car to deal with. 99% of my time on bikes I would have given my left arm to have that kind of luxury. What a whiny fool.