Abuse from car drivers

[Greenfieldsandpaddocks]

Twice is as many days I have received abuse for being a woman.

Yesterday, tail gated by 5 huge burly blokes in fiesta -tail gated right on the end of my bumper. I pulled over to let them pass. Bloke shouted at me 'women shouldn't be drivers too slow' as he drove past (2 kids in the car).

Today's was caught on dash cam.2 blokes in a huge white van. Forced me to brake hard as they came around the corners in a huge white van on the WRONG side of the road to overtake a parked car. This time I have video and have taken photos. Have got the reg and I beeped my horn as he forced me to brake as he came round the corner.
He then two fingered me and called me a 'stupid woman'. I have pictures of this.

I was going slowly, with the dash cam on.
IF I report to the police -I'm pretty sure they won't do anything. Anyone else getting stuff like this. I could post them in a local FB group, but even then what happens? I don't think I've had abuse from a woman driver ever (I'm sure it happens) but it is this male entitlement that they seemingly own the roads. Anyone else feel like this?

My SiL had this when she had a convertible beetle. She had some dickhead driving really aggressively in his van and when she accelerated to get away from him, he started chasing her, flashing his lights and beeping. She ignored him for ages but eventually pulled over. He jumped out of his van and started stomping over, red angry face and already calling her names. Then my DB got out the car, where he’d been in the back with the dog, unseen. My brother is 6’4 and built like a brick outhouse. And when he’s annoyed, he looks scary. The snivelling little coward put his hands up and started apologising for the misunderstanding and saying he didn’t want any trouble, before jumping back in his van and squeeling off. Completely happy to abuse a woman, but when faced with the prospect of getting his arse kicked, he’s suddenly contrite.

Another friend had a man reach in through her window, grab her keys and throw them into a field to ‘teach her a lesson’.

I’m glad I don’t drive. I’m so full of rage towards these bullying men now that I’d end up either getting arrested or seriously hurt.

Sn0tnose, that's awful!! Your poor SIL and friend must have been terrified! Men think they own the road. They think they own everything.

LastSummerHere My friend was pretty shaken up. It wasn’t the first horrible experience she’s had with male drivers and it has changed the way she feels about driving.

My sil was fine. I don’t think she would have been fine if my brother hadn’t been in the car with her, but I think she enjoyed seeing a bully panicking that he was going to come off far worse than he’d anticipated. Hopefully it would have made him hesitate the next time he decided to start frightening a woman he didn’t know. Shocking that it took the prospect of getting his arse kicked to make him back off though.

I just had a woman being a psycho when completely in the wrong.

So I dont think its a 'because you are a woman' thing.

Some people are just such shit drivers and they have to blame you because otherwise they have to acknowledge their own shitness.

I once over took a man on the motorway, as I did it he beeped and made a rude gesture and then sped up to match my speed so that I couldn't get back in. (Undertaking, and furiously wanking the air whilst laughing) I slowed down - so did he. I sped back up, he waited until I started to pull in then put his foot down beeping wildly seemingly attempting to either hit me or just scare the shit out of me. I pulled back into the middle lane to avoid hitting him and missed my turn off. He played this cat and mouse game with me for a long time (the whole thing lasted about 6 miles) in the end I slowed down to dangerous level to drop behind him AND another car (to get away from him/ hope he'd get bored of tormenting me) and pulled off at the next junction. A lady followed me and when I stopped she came to see if I was okay and to give me her witness and her dash cam footage access. She was a beautiful human that really helped me. The police of course did nothing. Beyond pointing out to me that dropping to so heavily in the middle lane was "also dangerous" and I could be charged for it so best not to pursue. The footage includes him constantly matching my speed, swerving at me,, screaming at me through his window and beeping whilst I try to speed up to over take (he made it impossible) and me being pretty much forced to drop back to get behind him.

Not for a second do I believe that these things are not sex based- not ALWAYS sex based I agree- but no way do men experience these incidents with the same frequency or aggression.

@Sn0tnose

LastSummerHere My friend was pretty shaken up. It wasn’t the first horrible experience she’s had with male drivers and it has changed the way she feels about driving.

My sil was fine. I don’t think she would have been fine if my brother hadn’t been in the car with her, but I think she enjoyed seeing a bully panicking that he was going to come off far worse than he’d anticipated. Hopefully it would have made him hesitate the next time he decided to start frightening a woman he didn’t know. Shocking that it took the prospect of getting his arse kicked to make him back off though.

Sn0t I was just talking to my husband about your friends and SIL's experiences....he was disgusted!! He was telling me about a time a man nearly slugged him....he was driving my Corsa at the time and for some reason that seemed to enrage this utter Neanderthal!! I'd love to see men's faces if we tried to ban them from the road...they deserve it a lot of the time!!🙄

Our lane comes out onto the main road that runs through our village so I get this a lot. It’s a big sweeping bend with lots of parked cars. People come hurtling round the blind bend on the wrong side of the road and just seem to hope that there’s no one coming. I met a van driver just recently who obviously thought I would evaporate into thin air so as not to inconvenience him. When I actually came to a halt in the road thinking ‘where the fuck does he think I’m meant to go?’ he launched into a spitting red faced diatribe and was gesturing and his mouth was ranting something at me. Fortunately my windows were closed so I couldn’t actually hear him. Lord knows how he thought he was in the right. I could see him coming, presumably he could see me and had ample time to stop and pull in.

@Gottalife

IF I report to the police -I'm pretty sure they won't do anything.

Yes they will. Have you ever watched CyclingMikey on YouTube ?

Just watched a couple of clips. What is it with idiots driving down the wrong side of the road at that particular traffic island in London?

Today I heard a guy in a car shout at a male pedestrian 'to get out the road you fat c*nt'. Vile.

I wonder if it's the heat. On the school run a woman with a child and a man were having a shout off because he wouldn't put his walking to heel, clearly very ancient and feeble dog on a lead. She was the one swearing the most in fairness.

I got shouted at and abused by an angry little chap because i couldn’t park in a very small spot in a tiny car park. In the end I gave him the space - and he couldn’t park in it either! HA! They drove off in a huff. The woman he was with was cringing. I kind of judged her too though for being with such an utter knobber.

I'd slow down too if someone came up behind me flashing. You sound worse than him

Even though nothing may seem to be done, reporting to the police gets things logged. They may add up eventually and create a pattern of bad driving or there may be reports by others of the same day etc

With regard to the van “Forced me to brake hard as they came around the corners in a huge white van on the WRONG side of the road to overtake a parked car.”
As described the van wasn’t necessarily sound anything wrong - if a car is parked on the road then surely other vehicles would need to change sides of the road to get past??
So your need to brake could mean you weren’t driving appropriately for a corner with a car parked on it, or for the distance that you could see.
If you just mean you needed to slow then neither of you were in the wrong
If the parked car causes a hazard on a corner then it’s them who were in the wrong

As a ery new driver when I was 24, I man nearly drove into me on a roundabout. He honked his horn and followed me so closely and I was quite shaken and so pulled off into a petrol station to park in a bay and calm my nerves before I carried on driving. He followed me in and parked his car behind me car so I couldn't get out (at which point and desperately locked my doors) and charged over tk my car. He was yanking thr door handle ans banging kn the window. I was shaking so much but managed to get my phone, dial 999 ans show him my phone screen which scared him off. I should have actually called them but I hung up and called my mum instead. It was so scary.

I wonder if behaviour is a bit better here in LA because anyone you see might be packing?! I mean, driving is pretty bad—people on their effing phones all the time (which is illegal, BTW), changing lanes without signalling, etc., and there's no effective slow/middle/fast lane distinction on the freeway, which I still find weird—and we often see the aftermath of accidents, but I have never seen people yelling at one another like this, of either sex. DH saw one incident once. (He himself is the sweetest man, yet behind the wheel he's a typical male and tends to mutter abuse for the slightest mistake made by others. Of course he never actually does anything about it.)

There's a rule, sexist, but it is so often true: the smaller the girl, the bigger the car. It's so common to see a tiny blonde in an enormous SUV with a venti skinny in one hand and her phone in the other, driving with her knees. From what people have said here, I now understand why—driving a big car or truck would intimidate male drivers (though it's not so good for the climate!).

Of course if you see a black Escalade with tinted windows you drive all nice, and then get the fuck out of there as soon as you can.

In Naples (Italy), where everyone drives like a goddam maniac, we hear of plenty of awful accidents on the news, but, again, we've seen just one road-rage incident.

I agree it's almost always men who do this deliberately against women, and carry it to the lengths the people posting here have had to endure.

I wonder if behaviour is a bit better here in LA because anyone you see might be packing?

I've has exactly this thought. I've lived in the US (reasonably recently) and although there is plenty of honking don't remember the same level of vileness (the gesturing, the intimidation, the abusive language, the aggressive driving that basically weaponises the car).

A few weeks ago, I experienced three separate unprovoked episodes of aggressive male driving in a week, all with my children in the car. The last one left me shaking with rage over how fucking dangerous these entitled fucking bastards are, putting other drivers and their passengers at risk by frightening the living daylights out of them. Honestly, something flipped and if I had have had a gun in my car... well. I don't know.

I'm just glad we have tight gun control in the UK.

I drive a little Audi A1 and when I first got it the difference in attitudes from other drivers from when I had been in the big Ford SMax was somewhat startling. You only have to read driving threads on AIBU to know the attitude shown by others towards Audi (and BMW) drivers. (We now have the latter too having replaced the Ford) Any attitude I get is because I am in an Audi which is also a small car, nothing to do with my woman hood.

Bloody hell this is depressing. Men in general aggressively targeting women and the police do fuck all, even with witnesses and evidence. In fact, men just getting away in general being shits to women and nothing gets done. Yes, I know NAMALT, but enough of them. Very telling @TheSlayer about him backing off when he realised the driver was a man.

Stuff like this needs to be clamped down on hard. But no, nothing done and they carry on untouchable, sometimes escalating until they do something really shit (see men who stalk then kill, men like Wayne Couzens) and oh yes then everyone sees the behaviours that led up to it and ask but why wasn't anything done?

Just sick of it.

I think a lot of it has to do with the car you drive too, for example, people often make dangerous manoeuvres around me when I'm driving my husbands smaller sportier car, than when I'm in my Range Rover, probably because DH's car is more "feminine" than mine.

We visited LA and found the roads so chilled compared with here. Dh did a lot of road cycling and got no abuse unlike here.

I am lucky to not have experienced much road rage whilst driving. However the few times it has happened, it has always been men.

The worst was at a petrol station. It was packed so every pump taken. I was filling my tank up full whereas the man behind me wasn't, so he took less time than me.
He started to swear at me and do rude gestures because I was taking too long. It was seriously unbelievable! I've never known anything like it and hope he doesn't have a partner or children at home. So aggressive!!
I ignored him completely, filled my tank up and took my time to get in and put my seat belt on ;)

You don't even have to be driving to get this sort of cr*p. A couple of years ago I crossed the road in front of a stationary 4x4, waiting for the lights to change. He sounded his horn at me, even though he wasn't moving. I turned around an went up to the vehicle to ask why, and he was lowering the window. He snapped "Touch my car, lady, and you're dead", so I tapped all around the window with my gloved hands, then walked away. The lights changed, and, as he drove off he shouted "You're dead, lady, you're dead!" I thought it was quite funny to make him so apoplectic, but as I walked home I became more and more aware that he probably would have killed me if there hadn't been so many people around.... When I got home, I couldn't bring myself to tell my husband what had happened because I was so upset, I had to write it down. He really had wanted me dead....

Linking to this as I just shared an interview with safeguarding minister, Vicky Atkins.

Abuse whilst driving might not be considered street harassment but the sentiment of wanting women and girls to be aware of what is already a punishable offence as well as make perpetrators aware would surely include abuse like you experienced OP? IDK. Hope it's useful.

Police Officer to be put in charge of tackling violence against at women and girls www.mumsnet.com/Talk/feminism/4302612-Police-Officer-to-be-put-in-charge-of-tackling-violence-against-at-women-and-girls

ArtemesiaK, Katkinsgreyy, what a horrid experiences for you. The level of aggression in these men, and the speed with which they can flip from zero to exploding with rage, is so disturbing.

When I have been on the receiving end of similar behaviour I wonder how they will behave when they get home to their wives and their children. Is this really who they are? And then I reflect on the countless threads about abusive men on the Relationships board and I have my answer.

There was a woman in the passenger seat- she was turned away from me as she must have been embarrassed/scared. I feared for her safety....

One twat male driver was honking and gesticulating at me because I stopped at a zebra crossing to let pedestrians cross 🙄🙄. What would he have done - mown them down?

The one consolation is hoping all this anger and dramatics leads to heart attacks. Would serve them right.