Mr. Genius looks like Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, owner of Kwik-E-Mart. Serving up Squishees all day long..... "thank you. come again".

This is why I need rockets installed on my car. People like this would be in orbit after the first offense.

I want a loudspeaker: "You're a bad driver! Get off the phone!"

I remember reading about someone a few years back who carried several large signs in her car that she would flash at bad drivers. I remember one of them said something like "Hang Up And Drive!" But I guess if someone can't be bothered to pay attention to a stop sign, they're not going to bother reading a sign in another car. I think your bullhorn suggestion would probably be the most effective.

The guy would seriously have rolled right over me if I hadn't stopped and laid on the horn. The best was, when I laid on the horn, he didn't stop and let me go (I had right of way) -- just kept rolling through the stop.

My other pet peeve (and I recently yelled at Julia Roberts and whatever hairy, bearded guy was driving her Prius for this) is people in cars who hurry along pedestrians by advancing on them as they cross the street. No, movie stars get no special treatment. I shouted into her open window on the passenger side: "That is not appropriate driving!"

My husband's stepfather has one of those things, like the police have, on his car, and he yells at other drivers and plays music over it. It seems like a lot of fun, but he's in Latin America. I've wondered if those are legal here, because you'd think people would have them, if they were. I'd want one, I always am yelling at the other cars...it would be so much cooler if they could hear me!

Amy - next time just sacrifice yourself and your car like a Kamikaze; i.e. let him hit you. Then he'd get cited for running a stop sign, failure to yield and driving to endanger. You might be dead but at least his insurance would go up.

Okay, bad idea. Putting his picture on your blog is probably better. Could you put his picture on a billboard? A modern day scarlet letter of sorts. Or we could just be literal about the whole thing and tattoo a red "F.I" for "fucking idiot" on his forehead...I'm sure it wouldn't be tough to find a spot for the tat seeing as how he's bald.

I think you need the loud speaker. You have to be careful when you front freaks. Did you make sure he didn't follow you after you left?

I agree with KG. Be careful Amy, there are lots of crazies out there.

Yeah...that's typical.

From the short time I have been in LA I have figured out that all of the occurrances of Road Rage are NOT because there are a lot of "crazies with guns" but because there are so many F*ckwits who push normal people over the edge!

Seriously! I've lived all over the place and have NEVER seen the type of bone-headed stunts I have observed on the streets of LA. Even Boston was not as bad as this place!

Yeah...that's typical.

From the short time I have been in LA I have figured out that all of the occurrences of Road Rage are NOT because there are a lot of "crazies with guns" but because there are so many F*ckwits who push normal people over the edge!

Seriously! I've lived all over the place and have NEVER seen the type of bone-headed stunts I have observed on the streets of LA. Even Boston was not as bad as this place!

Kevin Spacey?

For many years, I've wanted some means - besides shouting and gestures - to express things to fools on the road. A loudspeaker might work, but not on the highway; a text-based system wouldn't get people's attention effectively unless they were right near you. Perhaps someone could invent a short range system to overpower cell phones? (I'm sure carnage would ensue from this)

Despite how quixotic it is, Amy, I really appreciate your quest to improve manners and self-awareness in our society. Let's hope it's the beginning of a trend. The fact that none of these people ever think to just apologize shows what an uphill battle it is, though. "I fucked up. I'm sorry." are useful phrases in many situations. People should know this.

Gallagher proposed an interesting system many years ago.

Stick-um darts. Those little darts with suction cups on them. Someone cuts you off, you shoot a dart at them. Then, a cop sees a guy with a bunch of darts on his car, pulls him over, gives him a ticket for being an asshole.

Because as cathartic as LAW rockets would be, I guess it would be a bit of a mess.

Amy, Amy, Amy. Please stop following and interacting with idiots like this. Now honestly, was calling this fool on his reckless driving truly that gratifying? I doubt it. Worth getting hurt if he had reacted aggressively? Hardly. I know what you're going to say: that you pick your battles carefully. I'm not so sure. I mean, based on the dialog you reproduced, the guy sounds to be of decidedly subaverage intelligence. The way he turns your words around reminds me of the character Kimball on Green Acres, which of course was long before your time so it might not be familiar to you. Anyway, Kimball was funny. This brute sounds like a doofus.

Look, honey, you drive defensively for a good reason, right? Because he would have hit your car and presumely left you seriously injured if not dead, no? Now please explain the part I didn't get about you needing to follow him and confront him in a parking lot. OF COURSE the cops weren't there when you would have liked them to be. Funny how that works.

Amy, I really wish you would stop doing things like this. Of course you're "right". I'll repeat that: you're right, you're right, you're right. But why, exactly, do you desire him to acknowledge that? This is the part I don't understand. Oh wait, I know, is it that you think he's suddenly going to morph into some reasonable, articulate person and give you a perfectly intelligent justification for his driving? Is that it? Is he going to be all contrite and say something like, "Gee, sorry Ma'am, guess I ran that stop sign. Guess I shouldn't have been on the phone. Hope you're not, like, mad at me or anything."

Oh Amy.

If anything happens to you, I've got dibs on Lucy.

Someone beat me to it, but he does look like Kevin Spacey with a John Travolta chin.

At least here in Hawaii when an asshat cuts me off I get the obligatory 'shaka', translated: "I'm a freakin retard but thanks for not rear ending my car with expired tags"

He also looks oblivious to the fact that you are photographing him.

Rather than the stick-'em darts (which can get blown off due to wind drag), I've always favored paint-ball guns.

If we shoot at bad drivers with paint balls, we get our frustration out, and we irreversibly mark their cars. The ones with the biggest paint splotches are the ones you know to avoid.

Plus, maybe it'll keep people from spending ridiculous sums of money on SUVs if they know they're going to end up looking like clown cars in the end.

...while I acknowledge there are "crazies" out there, I commend people for doing things like this.

If everyone ducks there head and ignores behavior that could eventually result in your mother's, father's, spouse's, child's death, then you have a societal obligation to speak up. Enough of the wishy-washy "crazies out there speak.

A couple of punks flashed what looked like a gun at me on the GA400 when I lived in Atlanta, flipped off another driver, in an SUV...did I cower? no. Did I follow them bumper to bumper til they pulled off? No. I contacted 911, and stayed a safe distance from them, and followed them off of the highway. in addition, the SUV driver followed me off the highway. About 4 cop cars converged in the same general location, tracked down the punks in the old beater Mustang, and justice was served...no one for the worse, but potentially saving the life of a family member. The thought of the idiots flashing a gun to my 7 year old nephew, or my mother, etc was enough motivation to stop sticking my head in the sand, and let it go.

THAT is crazy. (not to say you shouldn't be prudent in how you manage situations like that, but). Good job Amy! nice blog, btw.

Reading comprehension help for Destardi: It's one thing to dial 911 from the safety of your car, traveling at a certain distance from the driving nut case. It's quite another to follow some mouth breather to a convenience store parking lot, and then to get out of the car and actually confront his dumb ass. This kind of vigilanteism can go very wrong, and for what? The satisfaction of telling the dick off? The problem I have with this kind of behavior is that it implicitly purports to do one thing, while in fact it does quite another.

We could probably all contribute some similar anecdote from our daily commute and have a nice little ragefest.

Sounds silly to me, too.

You're evidently new to this blog. I applaud Amy and a lot of the stuff she does, and I personally am not one to duck and cry victim either. I just think her temperament gets the better of her sometimes, and I'd hate to see anything happen to her because of it.

Did she get out of the car? Those pictures appear to be from inside the car.

Christina, you're right, they do, and thankfully so. Still, my point is that I'm afraid Amy occasionally gets a bit righteous to the point of endangering herself. It might sound silly, as I don't even know her personally, but I am sometimes concerned for her safety.

I didn't get out of the car. But, I appreciate the concern.

I'm actually quite careful, and I don't approach everybody who ticks me off. I'd like to live to chase the next one!

GM and Ford are selling these behmoths on the cheap right now. I guess guys like this feel that it's his right to drive like a jerk in his big truck.