to have verbally abused an old man i the street today?!

[smeeinit]

ok,im sure i am BUT in was bloody annoyed
so im driving along (on a road obviously) at around 20mph through town and from nowhere out pops an elderly gent in the middle of the road,i say elderly but he was proberly under 70!
i have to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting him and he shakes his head at me?!
huh? im on a road in a car driving 10mph UNDER the speed limit, hes swaggering across said road rather than walking 50ft to pelican crossing and i get a head shake?!

now verbally abusing people isnt a usual thing for me to do but i was rather angry so put the window down and said....

"dont go shaking ya head at me darlin,this is a road not a f**kin path love,go use the crosing"

so the proper thing would have been to smile politly and drive on wouldnt it?! so AIBU to have been abusive to an old guy?

Can understand your annoyance - but disagree with swearing at an old bloke..

yer a potty mouth.better watch out his scary ned grandweans dont chib ye

Horrible to swear at anyone. People who shout things out of cars look like they really need to get a life - that was you.

I'd bet that those who agree with the OPs language would mind if someone shouted something similar to them or their nearest and dearest! How about this for example:

""dont go shaking ya head at me darlin, move your f**kin pushchair"

If some bloke had said it to a mum everyone would be up in arms.

Of course one can get annoyed with how people use the road but the language used was completely unnecessary IMO.

smeeinit.. I don't think its anything to be proud of to say 'yes, I do swear at people a lot!' You can get your point across without swearing, you know. Life would be a lot more pleasant if less people effed and blinded all over the place.

Poor old bloke.. you could have really upset him. You weren't exactly saving his life by swearing at him were you? Would you like someone talking to your Dad or Grandad like that? No... I thought not.

What others have said about being annoyed. Can understand that strictly speaking you were not wrong in the first instance but to use that sort of language subsequently doesn't reflect well on you does it?

When you get to a certain age you do expect people to give you the benefit of the doubt and to give some respect.
YABU as he is old and thinks he owns the road, probably was there before it was laid down!
What i can't stand is youths who think it's funny to stand in the middle of the road and dare you to run them over.
Had a whole gang of them at 10am one Saturday morning on a quiet road. They all came off the pavement and just stood in the middle of the road, i just beeped them and kept going, they had to jump out of the way then.
And a bit further down, one of their friends (or someone as equaly stoned) decided it would be fun to run accross the road but very slowly so all the traffic had to stop.#
I just had to wind down my window and shout "Move yourself you fat b**td!", jaywalkers should be fined on the spot!

helliebean, did you not notice the after i said "yes i do swear at alot of people"?
and please done answer a question for me.
"Would you like someone talking to your Dad or Grandad like that? No... I thought not"
if you had read the whole thread you will have noticed this....

By smeeinit on Wed 26-Nov-08 14:26:09
lulumama,I didnt shout at anyone,why are people assuming i shouted?
and yes i certainly would want and expect my parents,when they get elderly,to be shouted at if they were stupid enough to cross the road in the path of a moving vehicle! it may teach them not to do it again and maybe save them from getting killed!

I think it's understandable that you were annoyed. But I will never understand why a motorist gets him or herself into a self-righteous rage about a pedestrian doing the wrong thing on the road. It's not as if a pedestrian making a mistake is going to hurt you. You making a mistake otoh, could hurt them quite badly.

I think the Ashford shared space experiment is a real step forward. The only problem with it is that courts don't impose real penalties for drivers who injure pedestrians. Without proper penalties, shared space inevitably means that those who can hurt other road users most, are in effect going to bully other road users. The power of the car has to be neutralised by significant penalty for the abuse of that power.

Elderly people have the same type of problems children have in measuring speed and distance.

That's why they make mistakes on the road.

I had no idea that means what you are saying isn't true. How would I know that? To me following a statement means you find it amusing.

well helliebean we shall agree to disagree on that one as to me means its said in jest whereas means i think somethings funny.

Fair enough!

So you think that swearing at someone makes it less likely that they will put themselves in a dangerous situation? Teaches them a lesson? Really?

If it had been you, perhaps not paying enough attention when crossing a road, run down and almost hit by a car, do you really think that the car driver swearing at you would make you think you were in the wrong? I suspect that it would actually make you just very angry with the driver (she almost kills me and then has the gall to swear at me too, might be a more likely reaction).

In general losing ones rag with other people is counterproductive, and as Mums I would have thought we all had first hand experience at that. You had a nasty shock, and you probably reacted fairly instinctively, but yes you were unreasonable.

nooka, i wouldnt be crossing a road inbetween parked cars and not paying attention though,i would a
have used the crossing hence not putting myself in that situation in the first place!

You were being unnecessarily aggressive.

The OP was not being very nice when she vented her frustrations at the old man, but I don't think she was actually being unreasonable. Having someone appear from nowhere and force an emergency stop is bad enough, but then to get an arsey head-shake as if it's her fault would have tipped me over the edge a bit. I can't abide people who do that head-shaking thing.

I don't buy all this "older people are all sensitive souls who can become housebound after a bit of an altercation" stuff, either. Around here, the oldies give as good as they get and are often very assertive. They've been there and done it all before.
My dad, who is 60-odd and could be classed as "old" now, would have treated this story as something vaguely satisfying to get cross about later!
Older people have not "earned" the right to be obnoxious or awkward either.

People in cars are generally far more aggressive than if they were outside their car.

The old man would have been annoying but these days, we seem to think that if soeone has really annoyed us we can just swear any old insults at them.

I think that is wrong. I don't think anyone should be sworn at by a stranger.

What is it about the car that makes us so aggressive I wonder? Is it the way we're taught to drive, the way the roads are organised or the laws which ensure that there's no real penalty for killing or seriously injuring someone with a car? Or a combination of stuff?

I found myself being furious twice this week with cyclists. One was when a cyclist on a great big roundabout came out when I was coming around and I had to brake sharply to avoid mowing him down (hello, you're supposed to check there's no traffic coming from the right before you pull out) and one was today when a cyclist came round the roundabout (he was in the right this time) but becuase he was dressed in dark clothes and had had no lights on his bike and it was raining, I literally hadn't seen him - he was invisible until I was already half way across the roundabout and I had to accelerate really quickly to get past him without mowing him down. In both cases I muttered furiously about cyclists with death wishes, but in the same instant realised I was being ridiculous because it wouldn't have been me that was hurt by their behaviour, it would have been them. But there is something about that enclosed little space that makes one madly unreasonable.

I think we all do silly things at times and should be more forgiving of each other. Throwing the first stone and all that.

It's funny because if the same incident had happened with two people on foot, the likelihood is that both people would have apologised, and moved on. Perhaps even with a smile.

It's the kind of thing I would have done TBH and then felt really guilty/silly about when I'd had a chance to calm down. Smugness in old/young/short/tall/any people irritates me beyond belief but if you react angrily it nearly always makes you feel worse in the long run. so yes, you were prob BU but it's forgivable particularly because he'd scared the hell out of you by stepping out in the first place. Hope you have a better day today.

Good point anniemac, as a pedestrian in London I found drivers ALWAYS had a go when they were in the wrong. I'd narrowly escaped with my life thanks to them thinking it was a great idea to overtake a bus at a pedestrian crossing, or use a pelican crossing as an opportunity to pull out, and they would swear at me.

The one guy who did actually run me over was polite but also very keen to tell me it was my own fault, the (uninsured) bugger.

Mind you, I did put the fear of God into a white van driver who tried to run me over once. I had a bag full of books (coming back from uni) and automatically slammed it into the side of his van. He pulled up, got out and started mouthing off but I was SO angry I effed and blinded far more effectively. He drove off! With a big dent in his van.