Asshole driver gets what’s coming to him (skip to 1:00 for the short version):
I love the laughter at the end. The woman who posted the video, “Florida Driver,” claims she couldn’t move over to let Truck Nutz pass because of vehicles in the right lane, and that toward the end, she was close to where she would make a left turn.
Maybe she shouldn’t have been shooting vid while driving. And she definitely should have flipped the phone over because vertical videos are the devil’s handmaidens.
But how lovely to see a shithead get his comeuppance when attempting to execute a petulant road-rage maneuver. Sometimes when you wish a motherfucker would, a motherfucker does.
John Cole
I saw this on facebook earlier and wish I could like this post five times, even though she is an idiot for driving while videotaping.
Scott S.
God, I hope they find out that guy’s name. I bet his reaction to being a universal laughingstock is going to be even more hilarious.
Omnes Omnibus
No real weight on the rear wheels. Quick change of direction while accelerating on wet pavement. Oops.
RobertDSC-Power Mac G5 Dual
LOL. A great moment to end this day.
Punchy
I just watched this while driving, and it’s tough to watch a crash vid without crashing. And this comes from a guy who does crosswords while driving. Something about seeing a car behind me (in the vid) while looking forward messed with my brain.
Comrade Mary
@Punchy: Are you fucking serious?
SiubhanDuinne
@Punchy:
Ummm
Mandalay
I think it will become a moot point within a few years. Every new car will be equipped with a rear camera. It’s contentious legislation, but given the lives it will save it’s surely a worthwhile “invasion of privacy”.
When that happens people will be much less likely to behave like that truck driver.
chopper
@Comrade Mary:
Plus the gun he was cleaning almost went off. What a day.
Punchy
@Comrade Mary: I use this time of my day driving back from work to catch up on BJ. If theres a video, I feel compelled to watch it.
Mandalay
@Scott S.:
Yes, the cops got him…
Bobby Thomson
Florida Driver is full of shit. It doesn’t excuse everything Truck Nutz did, but she clearly could have moved over several times. In states with mandatory driver education, you learn to clear the passing lane after passing. And then there’s the East coast.
Also, too, she would have gotten a ticket in several states for using a handheld while driving.
Omnes Omnibus
@Punchy: I, for one, admire your ability to multitask.
GregB
When the road rage dick whistle passes her, you can see the roadway is clear in front of her, so her claims that she couldn’t get out of the travel lane sounds like bullshit.
Road rage assholes are assholes but so are people driving in the passing lane when they should be in the travel lane.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bobby Thomson: Was it a passing lane?
Violet
@GregB: She said she was turning left so moving out of that lane only to have to move back into it seconds later would have been stupid.
Earlier in the video it was clear there was a big truck in the right lane. The presence of other vehicles in the right lane is why Truck Nutz couldn’t move into that lane earlier himself.
Bobby Thomson
@Omnes Omnibus: On a four lane road like that, the left lane is the passing lane. People who ignorantly drive at 50 mph in that lane cause a lot of accidents. People who deliberately drive at 50 mph in that lane (like Florida Driver) just to piss people off are the devil’s spawn.
ETA: and yes, she does speed up to 60, but doesn’t move over, even though she has the room at that point.
Mandalay
@GregB:
I live in Florida and there is absolutely no requirement to move over on a road like that shown in the video AFAIK. Regardless, if there really was room for her to change lanes then there also was room for the truck driver to do the same.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bobby Thomson: It is, per the story, a lane from which left turns may be made. That ain’t a passing lane. This wasn’t on a freeway.
GregB
The video is two minutes long and the incident was obviously going before she whipped out the camera and started shooting.
So yeah, you are supposed to get out of the passing ane and then get back in the left lane to turn.
Her grotesque laughing says as much about her as Truck Nutz raging and finger waving says about him.
Also, if you are in the left lane and running a road blockade with the other vehicle in the right lane and their are people on your rear end, you pull ahead of the car on your right unless you want to just be a putz and get people pissed at you and then video tape it and start cackling when some moron loses control and possible hurts himself or others.
These people are in the mutual douchebag club.
Betty Cracker
@Violet: Yeah, if you read her description on YouTube, she claims she couldn’t move over because of the other truck at first, and then she was going to turn. Maybe she’s dissembling, but I tend to believe her because she has Gators fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view mirror. But she shouldn’t have been shooting vid regardless!
Bobby Thomson
@Omnes Omnibus: There’s a median strip and access roads.
ETA: and what GregB said. Bad driving all around.
Mandalay
@Mandalay: I stand partially corrected. There was a change in Florida law last year:
But that law change was not relevant to the video.
NotMax
He’s an ass, she’s an ass. The degrees of assititude are all that differ.
Laughter upon witnessing the crash is sick.
Punchy
@Betty Cracker: At least she’s shooting vid and not young bucks with candy and Arnold Palmers. Improvement dare I say?
Betty Cracker
@NotMax: I guess I’m a sicko then. I would have laughed at that asshole too, since there were no serious injuries.
John Revolta
@Mandalay: Rear-view cameras on cars are strictly for seeing what’s behind you. They don’t actually record what’s going on back there and save it for later.
………….unless, of course, there’s something they’re not telling us………….
nahhhh.
PhoenixRising
I’m not proud. I laughed at that asshole making his big bad move in 2WD. On wet pavement.
Physics: It’s not just a good idea. It’s the law.
It’s funny because I drive the smallest car America builds in a state that registers trucks & cars at a 1:1 ratio. And there are courteous, reasonable folks driving an F150 with a hard shell tonneau cover…but they’re the exceptions. This guy is the rule.
Nutella
Whether she was an asshole for not hustling out of the left lane depends on how fast she was going. If she was going slower than the speed limit and had room to move right, then she’s the asshole. If she was going at least the speed limit and/or had no room to move right, then she’s not. She has no responsibility to break the speed limit laws in order to make it easier for Mr Big Truck to drive faster.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker:
Well, yeah. You post here, don’t you?
I am a fairly fast and aggressive driver. Years ago, I was driving through a snowstorm on very iffy roads I was doing about 35 mph on the highway and I was moving fast compared to the others. Some idiot in a Saturn comes up behind me and, swear to dog, does a 360 turn. He keeps going and passes me. About a minute and a half later, he does a 180 and ends up in the median. I laughed.
kc
I’m glad he didn’t get hurt, so I can say: “Suck it, Truck Nutz!”
cckids
Not a road rage issue, but speaking of being a DWD (dick while driving), last week on the beltway here, coming up to a double exit (where the exit splits to go 2 different ways), the dude in the car in front of me was wavering back & forth, about 15 miles below the speed limit. He kept stomping on the brakes so that I came close to rear-ending him several times, finally chose a direction (same as mine), then slowed down more & hit the brakes some more. When I honked, he flipped me off, then did the palm-upward signal of “what am I supposed to do?”
What he didn’t know was that the car behind me was a cop, who, when the space came available, zipped around me & pulled his ass over.
I admit, I laughed like a loon. All my life, when I’ve seen people driving like douchebags, I always think “where’s a cop when you need one?”. For once, one was there.
Rafael
They should do like they do in Korea where a lot of people have cameras installed in their cars so they can use the footage in case of a lawsuit or an accident. Korea has the worst drivers I’ve seen and I’m pretty sure the rate of car accidents is higher than in the rest of the industrialized countries. The cameras are called Black Box and there’s a facebook group with that name that has some crazy (and some disturbing) videos.
GregB
Did anyone notice if there was a ‘support out troops’ magnet on Truck Nutz truck as it spun out of control?
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Once the state of any injuries was determined, that may be a different situation. As an immediate response, I maintain it is sick.
Not familiar with Florida law, but she would be cited for inattention to driving here. Audio certainly makes it sound as if she was lane drifting (sound of tires repeatedly going over lane markers).
And she certainly wasn’t going to make an immediate left, as she went straight through the intersection where the left turn arrow was clearly visible.
This doesn’t make what the truck driver did in any way correct. Just pointing out that she is not blameless of bad behavior either. Driving and maneuvering with only one hand on the wheel is terrible practice.
patrick II
@Rafael:
The same is true of Russia, which is why there was so much video of that asteroid that hit there last year.
cckids
Having just had 2 teens go through driver’s ed, they don’t teach kids the “passing lane” bit for highways anymore. I don’t know what the rationale for that is, but it is apparently not the thing anymore. They teach kids to drive with traffic, and not to be continually switching lanes.
Omnes Omnibus
@cckids: On my way to work today, some idiot in Kia Santa Fe decided to drive straddling both lanes. At a stoplight, she finally moved into the left lane. I went into the right, a car behind her. When the light turned green, she moved forward and drifted right while still in the intersection. She damn near hit me. She didn’t because I had been watching her. I hit the horn and the brakes. Some people are just bad drivers.
Violet
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, I must be a sicko too since I cracked up when the guy crashed his truck. She shouldn’t have been filming, but talk about instant karma for the truck nutz idiot. Ha!
@GregB:
You do not speed up unless you feel safe doing so. I know I’ve been in similar situations where I would have had to speed up to well over the speed limit to get out of that lane. It would have felt dangerous so I didn’t do it. Sometimes you’re driving along minding your own business and other cars speed up suddenly, boxing you in. It wouldn’t surprise me if Truck Nutz was one of those types.
patrick II
I have absolutely no sympathy for that asshole truck driver and it is not just because he was tailgating or giving the finger, He got into an accident because he deliberately cut in front of her — too quickly as it turned out — to try and make her jam on the brakes and perhaps get into her own accident. He ended up crossing two lanes of incoming traffic and he was lucky he didn’t get himself and someone else killed. I hope that whatever judge sees this video gets serious with him.
Gex
My brother-out-law lives in Florida and he was telling me of this new thing he’s seen in the state. Drivers will work to get to the front of a string of cars in the left lane and then slow down so they can use their phones to text and such. Going slower than the cars in front of them, they can pay less attention so they feel safer while they do their stupid texting.
Unbelievable that they think there is a way to “safely” text while driving.
Mandalay
@John Revolta:
Hah! I had completely misread the situation. Thanks for putting me straight.
Violet
@NotMax:
Don’t think that was tires on the lane markers. That was the sound of tires going over the road itself when the style road construction changed. Maybe it’s a southern thing, the way the road is constructed or the type of materials used to deal with the heat/humidity. It makes this repetitive thumping sound. Haven’t heard it in roads in colder climates.
Once the accident happened she may have not turned left for any number of reasons. It looked like she pulled off to the side of the road. I can see her being surprised and missing the turn. I might have done that in the same situation.
cckids
@Omnes Omnibus:
This. I get being in the wrong lane, getting confused about your exit, having a brain fart about . . .whatever, but not the attitude that its everyone’s fault but yours.
Betty Cracker
@cckids: Here’s what I hate: when someone discovers they’re in the wrong lane — either they’re in the turn lane and don’t mean to be or vice versa — and they stop and hold up traffic until they can go in the desired lane. If you miss your turn, you suck it up and make a u-wee down the road.
opiejeanne
@PhoenixRising: It was a black pickup. If the driver was 19 there was no other way he could have behaved, at least in one area I lived in.
opiejeanne
@Betty Cracker: Yes, and you don’t swerve across two lanes of traffic AND the gore point because you missed your ramp. Geez.
cckids
@Betty Cracker: A-men.
Ruckus
@cckids:
Had that happen for me once in nearly 48 yrs of driving/riding.
It’s usually a cop in the wrong place at the wrong time, but for once it was the opposite.
Ruckus
@opiejeanne:
Did you mean physically 19? Because I’m pretty sure a lot of the full size, non work truck drivers in my area don’t come any where near 19 maturity wise. Not all, just a large percentage.
? Martin
@Betty Cracker: Yep. It’s the ‘I’m more important than everyone else on this road’ attitude that pisses me off. Ok, you fucked up, so you go a couple extra blocks and pay for your mistake – you don’t force everyone around you to pay for it because its inconvenient for you.
And there’s no excuse for the pickup’s behavior. Doesn’t matter if someone is driving too slow for your taste so long as they’re within the law. The speed limit is just that, a limit. You don’t have a right to drive whatever speed you want.
Hell, if you insist on blasting down the road above the speed limit, why restrain yourself on which violations you rack up – just drive up the shoulder and blow through the stop sign as well. The tickets are all the same size. Be creative.
Another Holocene Human
@Bobby Thomson: It was in an urban area. There’s no duty to move over in an all-directions-access urban highway. Furthermore, the speed limit was likely 55mph, which means he wanted to go 10 over in an urban area with houses right up to the road. There’s a reason he got charged.
Another Holocene Human
@Bobby Thomson: okay, you’re an idiot–thanks for clearing that up, Bobby Thomson
Cassidy
I don’t know. I always thought that when cars get right up behind me like that they’re asking me to slow down and be safe.
ericblair
@patrick II:
Apparently the reason Russia kicked ass in the Paralympics is its large and growing supply of automotive-related young healthy amputees.
Mystical Chick
@? Martin: THIS x infinity!
I’m of the ‘let me just get the hell out your way’ variety driver because who needs that kind of aggravation? It’s got to be (mostly) a man thing because I’ve never (never!) had the urge to drive like a huge dickhead. I’ve seen my husband go into some weird testosterone fueled trance when stuff like that happens and it’s scary shit to me. I want no part of any of it and I will move out of the way as quickly and safely as I can.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
Would have been better if he’d gotten smoked by the beer truck. Darwin fail.
ETA: the lady driver was being a dick too. She sped up when he was trying to pass.
Also, she got passed on the right by a slow moving truck. Dick moves all around.
libarbarian
@Bobby Thomson:
WRONG.
NEVER move over for aggressive tailgaters. You don’t reward bad behavior. If they are polite enough to back off for a bit, THEN you reward them. If they act like assholes do everything you can to box them in.
libarbarian
@PhoenixRising:
Damn straight.
I moved from DC to rural PA and I can tell you that rural Hicks driving Pickups are the biggest pricks on the road anywhere. They are the pinnacle of entitled assholes who think it’s their god-given right to go as fast as they can whenever they want. These fuckers tailgate me on a 2-lane road in my Honda when I’m doing 70 in a 55. It’s not even possible for me to get over but they just try to “push” me to go faster.
I WISH I had seen one wipeout like this.
Woodrowfan
@Violet:
If you look carefully you can see the end of the left turn arrow painted on the road in her lain. it was a left turn lane.
I’ll move out of the way if I am in the left lane and someone comes up behind me who wants to go faster. but if they’re rude about it I’m a bit slower to do so. (and I have a slight lead foot so if I’m going slow in the left lane then there is someone in front of me)
carolannie1949
@? Martin: I know some people who think the speed limit is the slowest allowable on that road,
Bobby Thomson
@Another Holocene Human: ESAD.
Bobby Thomson
@libarbarian:
You are part of the problem.
AnonPhenom
Just be a fucking human being when you’re driving.
The wingnuts frequenly get derided here as sociopaths (and deservedly so) for supporting policies that hurt Other People.
I see way too many people, of all political stripes, allow their little inner sociopath manifest itself when they are placed behind the wheel of a car.
Unless you passing someone or making a left turn in the next 30 seconds or so … stay the fuck outa the left lane.
If someone to your left is looking to get over into your lane… give them some room.
Wait your turn… that’s why it’s called “alternate merge”
No one appointed you “Road Monitor”… it’s not your job to obstruct someone else because you don’t like they way they’re driving.
Finally, Don’t Fucking Tailgate! You’re just being a dick and inviting retaliation… if you need to pass, flash your high beams…once.
Also, patience.
shelly
Are you sure the guy wanted to pass? That’s how close all cars on the New Jersey Turnpike drive.
The Pale Scot
Ahh Florida, where the senior citizens drives slowly and safely in the left lane and all the NCCAR? fans are trying to pass them on the right.
For years the Sheriff’s Asso. has tried to get a stay to the right, pas on the left law passed, but FL remains one of the few states that doesn’t have it. It’s not just mayhem, it’s legal mayhem,
The Pale Scot
@shelly: The NJT, I was just thinking that. Rush hour to Manhattan on Rt78, 12 lanes going in either direction, cars bunched together like NASCAR, not an accident for week after week. Every time I drive RT4 above Tampa, multiple rear ended cars on the shoulder, at least two more dumped into the meridian all smashed up.
In St. Petersburg I’ve seen seniors driving the wrong way on one way avenues, they pass me by going in the other direction utterly unaware they’re going the wrong way.
The Pale Scot
@Bobby Thomson:
This is the South son, Education? Lane discipline? You’re talking Socolism!
The Pale Scot
@Mandalay:
Not going to be effective, the problem is the limit is 70 and the roads are designed for 75 and that’s what people drive, on the 2 lanes highways between cities all it takes is one ass doing 65 in the left lane to jam things up, I just don’t understand how you can look in the mirror and see the back up, see no traffic in front of you and not figure it out.
David in NY
I think the sympathy for tailgaters evinced by many above is really wrongheaded. You don’t have to drive in somebody’s trunk to deal with the situation when you’re behind somebody you don’t want to be behind (this was not a two-lane highway, and even then). You just need to have a little patience to get by them. And you need to drive safely in doing so.
She may have been annoying. But that didn’t give him the license to drive unsafely. His tailgating could have led to a serious accident. Like to have that truck of his in your back seat? And he could easily have hurt someone else with that stupid maneuver at the end — luckily he was his only victim.
So put your sympathy with somebody else (and if you’re sympathetic because you’d tailgate her too, take a deep breath and cut it out).
Aunt Kathy
You never know what kind of psycho is on the road with you. If you can, get the hell out of the way, no matter how good it feels to “drive safely” just to slow them down. This poor guy was run off the road & shot dead in my neck of the woods, and they still haven’t caught the shooter. Personally, I think the shooter was intentionally was hunting people, but, again, you don’t know whether the asshole behind you is just an asshole, or something altogether different.
http://www.heraldmailmedia.com/news/tri_state/pennsylvania/fbi-joins-search-for-shooter-in-i–road-rage/article_c33ff968-7676-11e3-80a0-0019bb30f31a.html
Ol'Froth
@GregB: @Bobby Thomson: That only applies to limited access highways, not roads that allow left turns and cross traffic, for obvious reasons.
The Pale Scot
@Violet: @cckids:
This, in NJ at rush hour at least, everyone knows it’s their responsibility not to fuck up, down here in FL I get the impression that people think it’s everyone else’s responsibility to look out for them.
Persia
@Aunt Kathy: I actually wondered if that’s why she was taping, she was afraid he was going to pull a gun or something. It being “Stand Your Ground” Florida I don’t blame her for pulling out the cell phone camera.
smedley the uncertain
@AnonPhenom: “…. if you need to pass, flash your high beams…once.” Ummm, in many states that’s a request for the driver in front of you to slow down. Flash more than once and you re rewarded with the rigid digit of destiny.
Bill
http://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/post/redneck-road-rage-video-leads-arrest
WaterGirl
@Bill:
I do love a happy ending.
AnonPhenom
@smedley the uncertain:
Well then, ‘when in Rome…’
On the east coast and it Europe when a car behind you flashes their brights it is a request to be let through traffic (if you see someone flashing into oncomming traffic it is a warning that ‘police are just ahead of you’)
gbear
@libarbarian: My trick for assholes who come right up on my bumper while I’m passing slower traffic is to wait until just before they’re about to cut off the car we’re both passing while still three feet off my bumper, and then turn on my directional to let them know that I’m going to get back into the slow lane. Then I pull back into the slow lane very ‘carefully’. Pisses the hell out of them but I’m doing everything by the book.
Truck-nutz in the video lost any sympathy I may have had for him (I hate drivers screwing with their cell phones) when he kept speeding up and slowing down to register his pissed-off-ness to the other driver. By the time he tried to blast out of there, lost control & crashed, I thought it was funny too.
AnonPhenom
@smedley the uncertain:
Oh, and:
If it means “I disapprove of the way you are …” whateverthefuckImdoing, they wouldn’t need to flash me more than once to get the high-sign. Most tailgaters are just jackasses in a rush too wrapped up in their own world to stop for a second and realise what they’re doing, but the bloody ‘Road Monitors’ have very rationally and self-righteously decided to be douchebags.
Seanly
@Mandalay:
Ummm, a couple of points:
1) The rearview cameras are only intended to work when the vehicle is in reverse.
2) The cameras don’t record any images.
The entire point of the rearview cameras is to reduce accidents and injuries while in reverse.
gbear
@Mystical Chick: In Minneapolis/St. Paul, the women drivers are becoming the aggressive tailgaters and all-around too-impatient drivers. Lots of moms in big SUVs and twenty-somethings in their coupes. They just don’t care about the surrounding traffic.
Joey Giraud
For a lot of people, driving a car is as close as they get to feeling in control of anything, much less their own lives.
TerryC
@AnonPhenom: @Cassidy: Good. Tailgaters are bullies who do their bullying with multi-ton weapons.
I also figure that when someone behind me honks their horn, they must be warning me of a dangerous situation I can’t see, so it is necessary to slow down or stop and look around carefully before proceeding.
AnonPhenom
@TerryC:
As long as you know that the ‘honking’ driver doesn’t have a woman in labor or an elderly person having a heart attack in the back seat of the car they’re driving…sure. Otherwise: #douchemove
Faux News
They were both wrong. However I do love that evil witch laugh from the female driver
Narcissus
Anybody who thinks there is ever a good reason to be that close to the car in front of you at those speeds is an idiot. If you want to pass you wait until the lane is clear, you don’t try to bully somebody out of the lane. If the lane isn’t clear, tough shit. Put on your big boy pants.
redheadedfemme
@libarbarian: No. Absolutely not.
Around here (also in Florida, needless to say) idiotic passive-aggressive behavior like that is a good way to get one’s head blown off.
Sure, the asshole doing the shooting (and tailgating) is in the wrong, but will that make you feel better when you’re dead?
Also, are you a police officer? No? Then the behavior of other drivers is not your problem, and it’s not your place to enforce traffic laws.
Use your head. If someone is tailgating, get the hell out of their way. They’ll get to drive the speed they want, you won’t have anybody on your rear bumper, and everyone will be happier.