From a longtime WSB’er – who begins her note, “My family was almost killed today on the WS bridge” – a road-rage report. Read on:
We were driving over the top crest of the bridge and crossed into the center lane to allow a semi to get in the far right. Before I did it I looked back to make sure no one was in that lane. The only car I saw was a white jeep about 2 blocks away and the lane was clear so I went to allow the semi to move over. About a minute later I had to think quick to avoid a collision with the semi to my right when that same white jeep came within inches of the driver side front-end very close to side-swiping us. He cut right in front of our car and I had to try not to hit him. We let him drive ahead after a loud honk and that was that.
He drove way ahead and was driving behind another car; eventually at the bend we drove past his right side. We made a special effort to ignore him and not make eye-contact. We weren’t chasing him, it was just the way the traffic had gone, and we began to move to the end of the bridge in the center lane.
At the stop I was talking to my husband and I saw him about a block away begin to dodge out from behind the car he was following and started speeding toward our car.
We were stopped waiting for the light at 35th in the center lane and were locked in. He came up from behind fast and came over to our right hand side and tried to side-swipe our car again! I had nowhere to go so I was lurching forward and when he got near and when he followed I would put on my brakes in an effort to shake him.
The light changed and we were able to drive but there were still no left-turn options and he tried to sideswipe our car on the passenger side again – he had his window rolled down too. He was 2 inches from our door. My husband – who is an SPD officer – was yelling to go and get away from him as he clearly was crazy while my 3-year-old screamed in back. I couldn’t take a left turn and was stuck next to him trying to not engage but to just get away from him. Eventually he gave up and drove off to the right, taking the Oregon St. exit toward the Junction.
This man was in his mid-to late 50s, had a colorful tattoos on the left wrist that went up the arm (red, yellow, blue) was balding, gray and wore glasses. He was driving a white jeep with a PEACE (!!) sign on the rear-view. We hope that he puts no one else in the danger he put us in today. We literally could have died on that bridge today.
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