Saw this on paper. Last Tuesday, a 26 year old man was charged with criminal intimidation and sentenced to two months imprisonment after he was found guilty of pointing a knife at another motorist during a road rage situation. The incident happened on 02 January 2019 at the traffic light of the Jalan Utama Berakas junction. I don’t know if this case qualifies as a “road rage” though, given that (unverified) words on the street said that those two knew each other and have pre-existing tiffs unrelated to how any of them was driving on the road that time. Both were said to have gotten out of their respective cars at the traffic light stop, going at each other with verbal barbs at first, until one of them went back to his car to get his knife and tried to gut the other man. There was no road rage there, only two airheads fighting on the road with a weapon involved.

There are certainly angry drivers on a daily basis. Civilised people just use their car honkers. One honk means a tad angry. Long honk means angrier. Sometimes the honks come with some mouth movements and angry looks. Once in a while, they come with finger and hand gestures. Occasionally they would give chase, tailgate, overtake, parallel the other car very closely and cutting in dangerously. These are not road rage. They are just drama queen drivers who lose their cool. After a few seconds, everything would be over, and the drivers get on with their lives with something to talk about to their friends and families that day.

If you’ve seen the movie Carrie, now that is rage. According to the US DMV website, the term Road Rage is “often used to refer to the more extreme acts of aggression, such as a physical assault, that occur as a direct result of a disagreement between drivers.” Just on Thursday in the US, 3 teens beat the crap out of a 73 year old grandfather for driving too slow. Still, this was nothing compared to what happened to other road rage victims in developed countries who weren’t so lucky, getting shot or stabbed to death.

Road rage of the physical assault kind do happen in Brunei, although in this smart phones and social media era, less and less is heard about them happening. Today, recording the road-rager in action is the best defence to put them off from any intention to physically assault people. However, back in the days, local drivers have unleashed a number of appalling road rage attacks, unbecoming of the country’s sleepy population.

Let me start with personal experience. In 1992, my brother was driving along the backroad from Bandar to Tutong. His wife was in the car with him. Then, somewhere in Kilanas, he noticed this car tailgating him. From the rear view mirror, he could see that the driver of the car looked angry and making hand gestures as if asking him to stop. Confused and not knowing what he did wrong, my brother accelerated which seemed to make the driver more angry. The man dangerously tried to overtake my brother’s car  in an obvious attempt to run my brother’s car off the road. At that point my brother hit the accelerator pedal harder. A high-speed chase ensued. My sister in law was wailing in terror. There was no police station nearby and no mobile phone. My brother decided to go to his friend’s house at Kg Sinaut. As they reached the friend’s house, they made a dash for the house door. The man got out of his car and gave chase wielding what appeared to be a samurai. Realising that my brother would call the police, the man went back to his car and left. Until today, my brother still wonders what the man’s issue was.

Sometimes in 2006, my other brother was driving through this single track road. It was just a short stretch where cars going the opposing direction would have to wait until the oncoming cars pass through. But, before my brother’s car reach the end of the narrow road, the driver of the oncoming car didn’t stop and wait, instead proceeded to drive through. Obviously, both cars ended up having to halt, blocking each other’s way head-to-head. Eventhough my brother drove into the road first, the driver of the other car gestured as if asking my brother to reverse his car. When my brother refused to budge, the man got out of his car and went over to my brother’s car. Not expecting what to happen next, my brother innocently kept his window down. Without warning, the man’s hands reached through the window and put a chokehold on my brother’s neck.

None of my brothers got seriously hurt. Im sure there have been many other such cases that went unreported. But, the country has seen some worser road rage attacks. Two outrageous ones are particularly jawdropping. In 2001, a woman and her 4 children were on their way to Kiulap when a car rammed into theirs. The man in the other car, who was speeding, was allegedly angry because he had to slow down when the woman got out of a junction into the road where he was driving through. The woman’s 15 year-old-son got out of the car to ask what the man’s problem was. The man then grabbed the teen’s neck and lifted him into the air. Seeing her brother choking and gasping for air, his sister got out of the car and ran to the nearest house to call for help. The man eventually let go of the boy. The boy was taken to the hospital with his neck badly bruised and bleeding from deep incision made by the man’s fingernails. What a psycho. He should pick somebody his own size.

The same year, a woman accidentally ran into a vehicle in front of her. The first thing anyone would do is to stop, get out of the car, apologise to the other driver, assess the damage and negotiate a way to settle the compensation. Right? Not in this case though. As the woman got out of her car, she was served with a big fat slap on the face by the man whose car she just hit. Wow! Talk about gender equality. Ironically, there was actually no visible damage to the man’s car. What a jerk.

Choking a 15 year-old-boy, slapping a woman, it seems like our local road-ragers have shown some talent in idiotism and dormant dexterity in violence. Add some weapons and throw in a box of matches in the cocktail, then we have the most psychotic road rage attack ever in the country. It happened in 1998 at around 11am. A man (the victim) was driving along Jalan Gadong when a car overtook and stopped in front of his car forcing him to stop as well. Then the driver of the other car went out and approached the victim’s car. He had with him a baton, a knife and a parang. Why the victim didn’t split right there and then, I don’t even know. The man then jumped on top of the victim’s car and smashed the front windscreen with his boots. He then instructed the victim to get out, smashed the windscreen on the driver’s side with a baton and took the key from the ignition. As the victim stepped out of his car, the man hit him with the baton and kicked him on the chest. It was only then that the victim decided to run. Yelling that he would kill the victim, the man took a match and light the car on fire. The man later took off just when the police arrived at the scene. As there were many witnesses, the man was easily identified and quickly arrested. He informed that he was angry because the victim damaged his car while overtaking and he just lost it. He got 6 years jail sentence and 10 strokes of the rattan for the attack.

For Brunei, the laws against alcohol consumption and guns possessions have been the saving grace that have kept these psycho road-ragers from unleashing their maximum potential. Lets just hope the situation stays that way indefinitely.