大象传媒 Scotland - 大象传媒 Scotland - How a little girl鈥檚 actions stopped a road rage incident

How a little girl鈥檚 actions stopped a road rage incident

One woman's daughter, sitting unseen in the back seat, diffused an aggressive road rage situation in the best way.

It was around six o'clock on a busy street when Edinburgh mum Regina, who was driving her daughter to the local leisure centre, encountered what she described as a ‘really scary’ road rage incident.

"If she wasn鈥檛 in the car I don鈥檛 know what would have happened."

"I drive quite a lot, I tend to chauffeur my daughter quite a lot around Edinburgh."

"It was quite a lot of traffic. We were all slow, the traffic was moving slowly, Regina told 大象传媒 Radio Scotland Mornings' Stephen Jardine.

Realising she had to turn right up ahead, Regina says she began to indicate to change lanes. She says the next thing she knew a white van had crashed into the back of her vehicle.

"I think [he was] driving a wee bit fast... It wasn’t anything massive but he did hit my bumper."

She pulled over to exchange insurance details with the other driver and discuss the incident but she was shocked at his reaction.

"He got out of his vehicle really, really angry. He was shouting abuse at me. He was being so loud and nasty. Others walking by asked me if I needed any help because he was being really aggressive", she recalls.

Regina called in to the Radio Scotland programme to share her story as part of a phone-in on road rage which, according to a is on the rise. Nearly a third of motorists asked, it claims, have witnessed physical abuse related to a driving incident in the past 12 months.

"It was a very scary experience because I was on my own with my daughter in the back of my car", Regina continues.

"He started shouting at me ‘that was your fault, it was definitely you, you just cut in front of me’, so I said no that’s not the case you can see I was indicating."

"He started shouting ‘What kind of evidence do you have?’"

"He had another passenger with him, another male with him, but he was like, ‘What kind of witness do you have?’"

Regina laughs, "At that point my wee one opened her door and said ‘Me, I’m the witness!’”

After seeing her daughter the driver rapidly began to change his attitude.

Photo by Sandy Millar

My wee one opened her door and said 鈥楳e, I鈥檓 the witness!鈥�

"At that point he was.. ‘oh I’m so sorry.. I didn't realise you had a child in the back... I’m sorry’ - so from really, really angry he became the opposite, so apologetic and everything."

"My daughter could have gotten hurt, god forbid, and I think he realised that because that’s when he got really apologetic about the whole thing."

"If she wasn’t in the car I don’t know what would have happened."

Stephen Jardine also spoke to Rebecca Ashton, Head of Driver Behaviour at the independent road safety charity, .

She had some useful tips for drivers who fear they might be prone to seeing red at the wheel.

"We need to be mindful when we get into our cars we should try and unload all our stress before we turn that ignition key", says Rebecca.

Despite her wee girl's bold actions, Regina says she has decided to fit a dash-cam to avoid problems in the future.

Allow extra time for your journey

"One of the triggers for road rage can be being late for an appointment. If they haven't let enough time for their journey and they know they're going to be late it starts these negative emotions flowing."

Be forgiving out on the road

"If somebody does something wrong just have in the back of your mind that they didn't get up with sole aim of upsetting you that morning. Think of it as being nothing personal."

Think ‘What if‘

"What do you know about that other driver? Do you know why they're behaving that way? One thing you don't want to do is to get into a situation where you've got a confrontation going on."

Rebecca Ashton, IAM RoadSmart