Well, of course, but the teen should know now that there are lots of crazy people out there. So it's a lesson. Also don't honk at people, give them the finger, or other road rage type things because people are psycho nuts. |
| She sounds like a garbage person and I'd worry that she's just going to try and sue because she wants a pay day. Her Poor baby growing up in what is sure to be an unstable home. |
| This is straight out of the 1980s scared straight playbook. I'm sorry your kid had to deal with an unhinged nut bag but this experience will make him be very vigilant when driving. |
Then you should not have been on the road. |
No one is saying that her behavior was ok. But it's not actually dangerous. |
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-Your kid likely caused an accident. He's an inexperienced driver.
-You only have one side of the story -Police love to lock people up, if she'd threatened him, they'd have charged her |
The story is eminently believable, actually. And your third point is wrong. |
You never taught your kid that if someone is following them like that you drive to a police station, not home? |
I probably shouldn’t have but I was. Thankfully no one ever hit me. |
| Do not deal with her at all. Let your insurance agent deal with her and her insurance. I had a woman call screaming threats over the answering machine. She went away after my agent dealt with it. She was at fault BTW. |
I think this is good advice. I would only add that I think you can share with your son that we cannot control how other people act. So he should be clear what his own boundaries are, and then act to protect those boundaries. |
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Years ago a nice teen rear ended me while I was taking DS11 from the ER of a small mountain town down to the valley where there was an actual hospital. He had spent the night with bad food poisoning and there was a limited time to make it down with the Zofran and reglan still working, trying to get him down before he started vomiting again. He has a vaso vagal thing that makes it hard to stop once he starts.
There was enough damage and some injury that we could not just exchange information and keep going. I was livid. I was so worried about my son. I gave a very sharply worded lecture to the teen driver about responsibility and consideration. I said a couple of mean things about how this was going to affect DS. What I did not do at any point was threaten, scream, or invade his space. He had apologized and taken responsibility immediately. I apologized to him for losing my temper. In today’s climate I would never-you never know what crazy might have a gun. People are not always their best selves, but accosting someone and making threats of violence is not ok, even if you are very concerned about your child. If that woman has PPD to that extent she shouldn’t be driving. OP, I would consult with a lawyer. |
New poster here and no, I have 3 teens and this wasn't in the top 1000 lessons I taught them. |
NP, this is absolutely among the first lessons I will teach my DDs in a few years when they start driving. |
Unfortunately it's necessary. I live on a busy street and drivers often speed up and/or go bonkers when I pull out of the driveway because it forces them to slow down for 10 seconds. Recently this happened and the driver made a very obvious effort to follow me in a threatening way. I drove to a nearby fire station and the other driver suddenly decided to go elsewhere. My two teenagers were in the car and I made sure they understood that this is the way to handle road rage. There's just so much stupidity on the roads these days. |