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Minivan Passenger Throws a Soda Can at a Biker. It's Time for Road Rage

We don't know why (actually, we do, but it hasn't been proven yet) but motorcycle riders seem to be real magnets for road rage incidents. You can understand why when they're the ones on the offensive, but going against a fully-geared biker - with a full-face helmet and protective gloves - isn't really recommended unless you're a bit masochistic.
Bike hit by soda can 1 photo
Photo: Screenshot from LiveLeak
And yet countless people do just that, hoping that in their case it's going to be different. Well, the fellow in this clip got lucky, but let's have a look at things in their chronological order and see how they escalated so quickly.

Firstly, we have the usual superbike rider out for a stroll with a camera attached to the left side of his helmet. He probably has a machine with a 1/1 power to weight ratio, so naturally, he's not going slow. The minivan in the second lane, however, is. The family car is taking its time overtaking a pickup which some could call "lane-hugging." The truth is the video doesn't start early enough to make a call on that, and besides, the biker is going way faster than the legal speed limit, so for all we know, the minivan might have had an adequate speed.

The biker is on a small, agile vehicle, so he decides to undertake and squeeze through the gap between the cars on the two lanes. He clears them and continues to speed down the open road. At the first traffic lights, the minivan catches up and a woman's voice (the driver) can be heard telling him that he "almost hit them" and that if he continued to drive recklessly like that, they would be forced to turn him in.

Say what you want, but he did drive recklessly. Just because he managed to go through without creating an incident doesn't mean what he did was OK. So how would you have reacted in his place? Turn to the woman and apologize? Nah, that would be too decent. Instead, he defiantly takes off once the light was green.

Inevitably, the two meet at the next lights with the biker waiting to go forward and the minivan turning left. As the latter passes the motorcycle, the man in the right seat throws what appears to be a can of Mountain Dew (I would throw that crap out the window myself, it's terrible) at the biker, hitting his fuel can. Our man suddenly decides he actually wanted to go left all this time and goes into pursuit mode.

Alright, so he's finally going to confront the guys in the minivan, you think. Wrong. When the car stops at the following junction, instead of pulling alongside it, he stops 20 yards or so back. Furthermore, when the man climbs out of the vehicle and heads toward him, he starts to back off. The angry man tells him to pay more attention next time he comes near his family and suggests he should maybe perfect his driving skills. He may have used different phrasing.

The biker leaves no doubt over the level of courage he possesses by storming away through the waiting cars and never looking back, probably regretting his decision to turn left instead of going his way. So, whoa are you siding on this one: the reckless biker or the road rage-happy minivan father? Tough one. I guess it's better to sit this one out.

[LIVELEAK=http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=884_1473980204]
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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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