Road rage Strikes back ...

It has taken me little while to put this down in writing but on the 11th of this month I was involved in a road rage incident; apparently south africans are the world road rage champions.

I was driving my motorcycle between the stationary traffic and as the traffic pulled off I pulled into one of the gaps which naturally form as traffic starts but the bmw driver behind me, instead of driving at a normal distance decided to tailgate me. Having someone tailgate one when one is in a car is plain annoying but having someone do it to you when you're on a motorcycle is just downright dangerous. I couldn't speed up because of the cars in front and pulling left so the moron can squeeze past on the right is very dangerous so I gently put the back brake on, not so much to slow down as that would have been plain stupid but just enough to get the brake light to go on so he would back off. Needless to say (now!) this just infuriated him and his antics to get past me just got worse. At about this time the road ahead and to my left cleared so I pulled into the left hand lane so he could overtake which he did at a furious rate but I think he was so busy shouting at me that he didn't see that the traffic ahead had stopped at the next set of lights and he only just missed going into the back of the car stopped at the traffic lights but in doing so he swerved into my lane and across my line. I had fallen back by this time so this was all happening in front of me so when I pulled up on his left hand side I hammered on his window with my fist and gave him a piece of my mind which wasn't very polite at all but at the end of the day it was only words and there weren't any threats made. I should have known better given the way the idiot drove but sometimes I just can't keep quiet. He took this very badly and got out of his car and walked around the back of it and up to the back of the motorcycle. I was looking at him over my right shoulder when the first punch arrived; I can remember thinking "What does he think he's doing trying to punch someone with a helmet on!" and it was a really big surprise to find that a fist fits neatly into the slot that the visor normally covers. I tried to duck as best I could but there wasn't really anywhere to go because the robot was red so I took a bit of a beating to the back of the helmet before he got bored and got back into his car. I pulled forward and memorised his number plate and drove off to work. Another motorcyclist pulled up beside me at the next traffic lights to ask if I was ok because there was blood dripping out from the bottom of my helmet from the one punch which made it through.

When I got to work I went and washed up and sat quietly for a while trying to decide whether or not to press charges and at the end of this I decided that this could not go unpunished. It is not acceptable to deck someone no matter what they've said so I went off to the police to lay a charge before going to casualty to have the cuts stitched up. Two cuts and three stitches in the one and a couple of hours later I was sporting a really impressive shiner.