was this woman bu to complain about my husband?

[wingsofgildedsilver]

My husband drives a van for work. Driving to work in the morning traffic and the car in front of him slowed down as the car in front of her was turning off left, the woman then waited to let another car pull out of the junction.

My husband beeped his horn at her and shook his head when she looked in her mirror at him.

When he got into work, later on that day the company had received a complaint about him - the woman had noted his licence plate and company name and sent them an email.

He now has a mark on his employment record.

Doesn't mean it was the woman in the car he was beeping at that reported him. Might have been somebody else who saw it and thought he was BU.

mercibucket you made me break into song

Yabvvu, good on the woman who reported him, it's people like him that akes driving bad

Mines I don't see how hooting and shaking his head amounts to an act of temper.
Frustration and/or annoyance maybe.Misplaced frustration and/or annoyance maybe.

But temper would make me think more of a sweary red faced scary looking man .Which is not the description we have had.

If no one who gets frustrated or annoyed should be on the road,we'd have a sight less congestion!

VerySmallSqueak - I have served on (and chaired) two juries, and I can promise you that, in that situation, I listened carefully to all the evidence given, and weighed the matter carefully.

You are free to have a different opinion on this discussion, but there is no need to be personally offensive, as you were in that post.

Very good point Mushroom. Very good point indeed!

STD I think it's quite apparent that I was intending my post as an observation rather than to be offensive.I try my very best not to cause offence to other posters,even if my view may be substantially different.I am sorry if you felt offended.

I was ,of course,referring to the fact that you are maintaining that maybe the incident was worse than the op had related,and that in that case,maybe he was sufficiently aggressive to justify the woman reporting him.

All these are maybe's and we can only work on what we have been told.

In a court there is meant to be reliance on the facts.On evidence,like you say.Not on maybe's.I am very glad that you apply a different set of guidelines when it comes to acting within a jury as to the ones you apply to a discussion on Mumsnet,because,as you know,in a criminal court,guilt needs to be proven beyond all reasonable doubt.Not on maybe's.

I guess OP gave up trying to convince the mumsnet jury then!

VerySmall reacting out of frustration to me is someone losing their temper. No-one should be driving a vehicle and reacting out of frustration, that's how fatal errors of judgement are made.

Not everyone is red-faced and ranting when they've lost their temper.

And inappropriate use of the horn makes everyone on the road more stressed, its not a pleasant thing to do.

Fairy nuff Mines.
We have a differing POV on that one.

But the fact is that the extent of his 'temper' was merely to hoot and shake his head.

I have said before.His behaviour wasn't right.It does make for a less pleasant driving experience for all.

But I think to say he shouldn't be driving a vehicle at all because of this is a bit OTT.

It wasn't apparent to me, VerySmallSqueak - hence my previous comment. But I accept your apology - though I am not sure that the little lecture that followed it was necessary.

If I go back to the story in the OP, I still believe that the OP's dh was in the wrong - as has been said earlier, he broke the Highway Code, and acted in a way that another driver found bad enough to warrant reporting it to his company. If he had had a bit more self-control, he wouldn't have ended up with this warning or whatever from his company.

So the car had slowed down to let one car turn into a minor road and while she was at it she kindly let a hesitant driver turn into the main road. And for this courtesy, which was costing your husband nothing a few seconds out of his life, he beeped at them to hurry up, which will not have improved anyone in the situation's life one jot?

If it happened as your DH says then he was being pointlessly unreasonable and rude. If he played down his part in it (as most of us tend to do) then he may have been/seemed more aggressive. Horn beeping except to alert people to your presence is generally an agressive act.

What he did was hardly the worst thing in the world but worthy of a complaint in the view of the other driver and worthy of a mark on his record in the view of his employer. Bad luck maybe, but that's the risk you take.

I hope he doesn't get made redundant on the back of a horn beep though.

It sounds like a fairly minor incident, the trouble with using your horn like that is no-one knows if they are the one it was intended for - anyone around him could have made the call to his company.

My DH used to be a delivery driver and I always felt a lot of respect for his attitude, which was that he should be a better, more courteous and considerate driver than most as he was a professional and being paid to do it as a job.

Everyone gets frustrated on the roads at times, especially if they are on a deadline for a drop, I'm sure the mark would not go against him for redundancies if he is generally a good employee - the main criteria is who it is cheaper to make redundant I reckon!

In my experience the 'report me on this number if I'm driving like a twat' stickers are on the back of vans at eye level. No way could the driver in front of this van have made a note of it while he was behind her. She couldn't have read the logo on the side either.

I strongly suspect there is far more to this than has been told here. I reckon she allowed the car in the side road to pull out and as it was turning to go in the opposite direction would have sat for a second or two while the other driver checked it was clear to pull out into the other lane. Van driver performing unknown vital lifesaving mission couldn't wait for these few seconds so honked his horn, gesticulated and overtook both cars (the OP says the opposite lane was clear) in an utterly twattish way. As always happens in these situations this dangerous driving got him one car space further ahead so the lady driver was now behind him and able to see the 'report me' sticker on the back.

I am now finding you are being personally offensive STD.
And pretty patronising too.

I imagine you aren't commenting on my 'little lecture' because you are unable to dispute what I am saying?

It was actually not an apology FWIW since I didn't feel that was warranted.I felt sorry that you felt offended.

Just so that's cleared up.

I doubt an employer would risk a valued employee raising a grievance against them for an unfair disciplinary without sufficient evidence to go in his file. I therefore suspect that your DH gave you the sanitised version, that his behaviour was much worse than you describe, and that more than one person reported him for it.

He is hardly going to admit to his wife that he behaved in an aggressive, possibly sexist, psycho manner, is he?

VerySmallSqueak, I'm not sure you should be making judgements on whether someone is being patronising.

Agree with LessMissAbs .... I don't believe it was just a hoot and a head shake.
I think he probably let rip at her but hasn't admitted as much to his wife.

I said I was finding STD pretty patronising Soup.

I can,of course,make my own judgement on how I am finding someone to be .

I'm not quite sure what you mean? .

In fact, I do think that if someone was given a formal warning at work because of shaking their head at another driver and tooting their horn, on the evidence of one person which is insufficient evidence, they would have a very good grievance case against their employer. It would be totally unfair and I can't think of any HR department that would risk it. Does your DH's work have an HR dept, OP?

I say this as I was the "victim", in a motorway traffic jam, of a van full of men sliding open a van door and one of them pretending to masturbate while staring at me and shouting. As their works number was printed on the door, I phoned their employers and complained. They took it very seriously and phoned me back to say that although they could not give specific detail, they had been stupid enough to deny it but had admitted to smoking and opening the door for fresh air, which was specifically written as being against company policy, and therefore received a formal warning.

Now in that scenario, I do not think anyone else would have phoned to complain because it was so clearly directed at me alone (he had his hand down his trousers) but they indicted themselves by their own comments in attempting to deny it.

Your DH could quite possibly have done the same, or another driver might also have complained about him, but if he was a great employee whom no-one could ever in a million years dream of behaving in this way, I doubt even then whether he would get a formal warning.

I don't believe everything I'm told. Do you, OP?

Has the OP said it was a formal warning? She said 'a mark on his record' in her OP. I do agree that a formal warning would be overkill in this instance.

Given that this man drives for a living in the firm's van then his behaviour whilst driving is of paramount importance.

It is like an employee behaving boorishly on the shop floor or in an office.
He wasn't on his own time he was working and representing a company.

If he worked for me I'd have his card marked.

I would suspect that if he had done more than suggested in the op he would have been called in to explain himself and give his side of the story.

I can only think that there is no intention to take this further and that it has simply been logged on his record,for future reference.

This suggests to me that what the behaviour the woman complained of was (although not good behaviour) no more serious than what the op has suggested.

OP's DH behaved like an intolerant and aggressive road user. It sounds as though if he'd been the one on the side road wanting to join the main flow of traffic and the woman who'd had to slow for someone turning left, he'd have also been moaning if she didn't let him infront of her

DontwanttobeObamasElf

That's really awful! Its so easy to panic when you are a new driver.

Op. I think it is never ok to try to teach another driver a lesson with a horn. He was a twat.