Re: [OT] Pedestrian on freeway points gun at you while you are driving to work: what do you do?

On Sun, 8 Dec 2024 15:08:32 -0700, anim8rfsk <anim8rfsk@cox.net>
wrote:

Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:

The local Toronto newscast had a story about a guy standing on the 401 -
a major highway running through Toronto (and all of southern Ontario) -
during the morning commute pointing a gun at people on their way to
work. It's still pitch black out so visibility is bad.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C0ntDsmra4 [first story in this newscast]
 
I'm curious to know what YOU would do in that situation.
 
Honestly, my first thought is that if I experienced that, I'd assume he
was a bad guy of some kind and I'd worry for my own safety and those of
others. I'd be strongly tempted to run him over in self-defence. In this
case, I'd turn out to be right: he IS a bad guy. I don't know whether
that would get me off a criminal charge of injuring or killing the guy
though. Or would the police decide it was his own damn fault for trying
to cross a major highway in the dark and not lay charges? Or would they
make an example of me because I injured/killed a black guy?
 
And what if he was actually a plainclothes cop who was looking for a
lift or even to commandeer my vehicle to chase down a bad guy? Or a guy
with major mental issues or high on drugs carrying a fake gun or even
just something that I mistook for a gun in the darkness?

A cop should be smart enough to know not to stand in the middle of the
road and in no case should they be pointing their gun at innocent
people even if they did want to get their attention.
 

I don't suppose you can ever really know what you'd do on the spur of
the moment if something unexpected and potentially dangerous happened.
 
I'm reminded of something that actually happened to me 20 odd years
back. I was just leaving work after a late shift and walking back to my
car. I was downtown on a major street that was one way with three or
four lanes of traffic but there was hardly a soul around. I was parked
on the opposite side of that street and I'm a chronic jay-walker so I
just crossed close to my car in the middle of the block. There was a car
coming toward me in the lane closest to my car and I crossed in front of
it but with ample room to spare. It was a rare windless night and as the
driver passed, he had his window open and said something, apparently to
me, about it not being smart to jay-walk. I muttered something that I
thought was under my breath about being perfectly capable of crossing
the street safely. I never would have imagined he could hear that but it
was windless and very quiet out and he reacted to my words with a bit of
a start and words to his passenger that I could not make out. I didn't
think much of it but I noticed that he turned left on the next corner
past my car and parked, and two guys got out of the car. They started
walking toward me in a way that suggested purpose. I somehow realized -
or maybe just feared - that they were coming back to have words with me.
I have no fighting skills and I didn't fancy the two-to-one odds in any
case so I got into the car and fired it up. They stepped into the road
as if to block me. I didn't even bother to put my seat belt on - and I
ALWAYS wear my seat belt - and just started driving. I was ready to run
those guys over and maybe they could sense that because they got out of
the road and I didn't have to hurt them.
 
So maybe I *do* know what I'd do if the situation in the video happened
to me....
 

>
Save your own life first.

Always the smart move. Reminds me of this Youtube video of a martial
arts expert (think it was a mixture of UFC MMA and other martial arts)
talking with a young guy about how to defend yourself. His response to
every attack was to block the attack and then move away. So the young
guy kept asking him why he wasn't attacking and the expert said
there's no point since his life and those that he cared about weren't
in danger. So his thought was to get away from the guy who was trying
to attack him.