I was driving home from the gym tonight and made my way north up Stone coming from 6th street. While driving up Stone, a white sedan from behind me is going at least 15 MPH faster than me in a 30 MPH zone, swerves around me, and nearly hits my car as he changes to the lane next to me. I'm pretty livid since he came so close and he pulls up in the left turn lane to turn west onto Speedway. I'm sitting in the left turn lane behind him also waiting to turn and I look at the guy's license plate. I actually memorize it real quick, but really there's not a whole lot I can do about this asshole...if only there were some way to report him.
When the light turns green, he turns onto Speedway and quickly speeds ahead, literally driving like a maniac and swerving around cars. Then, at the next intersection, I see in the distance a car getting hit from behind and smoke coming out of it. The white sedan swerves around some more traffic, runs a red light, and speeds off toward the freeway. I turn on my emergency signal and pull over to check out the damage and make sure the victims in the totaled car are alright and fortunately no one was injured, just a bunch of car damage. I get on the phone with 911 reporting the accident and they send out an ambulance and a police car. At first, the lady on the phone tells me that they can't take a report for a hit and run if there are no injuries, but I go ahead and give her my contact information as well as the number on the Michigan license plate I memorized earlier. She also tells me that there's not really much they can do if there's no ID on the suspect, something that I couldn't provide. Fortunately, there was another witness who saw the man driving the white sedan and could ID him. The ambulance soon arrives and I try to help them move the car out of the street, but this honky, old grey car just won't budge. After that, they let me go since I've provided just about all the help I could at that point. Them stopping traffic so I could get back onto the road was a pretty cool, VIP-ish feeling by the way. :)
Later this night, I'm sitting at home watching my boy Weaver pitch against the A's and I get a call from an officer. He asks for a description of what I saw and I basically tell him everything that I just told you. He tells me how much it helps them that they got a license plate number from me and I wish them good luck. It's funny, I sometimes think about what I would do if I were a cop. I'd be the hardass who would pull you over and try and put you behind bars, but usually I only think about that as I'm raging right after someone on the road just pissed me off. Tonight, I feel like I was actually able to help thanks to the rage I had after he almost hit me, which led me to memorize his license plate. I'm also really lucky that it wasn't me with the totaled car instead. Ugh, some people just flat out suck. :(
