The breeze was cold and the sun was setting. The music was playing as me and my sister sang along in the backseat. I looked up and I saw a car in front of us. I see their tail lights flash twice and that’s when my dad lightly honks his horn twice. A man gets out of the car but I felt safe, my dad has always been prepared to protect me and my family. As this guy was walking up to me and my family’s car, I immediately had this gut feeling that something was wrong. That’s when he pulled a gun out from his pant line. I could see this man looking into the back seat at me and my sister, that look of pure evil in someone’s eyes that never goes away. 

Road rage in the world today has become something bigger than you realize. Some people can think that road rage is just honking the horn on your car, making significant movements with your hands to show that you’re mad or make it noticeable that you don’t like how the other driver is driving. Until it goes much further into violence, guns, or physically hurting someone.

The experience of learning what the feeling is, to fear for yours and your family’s life at as young of an age as 13, a road rage incident I was involved in has taught me many things. It has shown me to always be prepared for the worst and what to know and do in these situations. Road rage has become a topic of concern over the past few decades. People never talk about road rage and how serious it can be until they experience something that changes their perspective on it or the difference in someone’s actions. In this world today, not many people are prepared for what can come to you. Life threatening situations can be as close as five minutes from your home.

The term road rage dates back to the 1990s when the media dubbed a new term for the growing trend of extreme aggressive driving cases that seemed to be flooding the country. Many legislators have made it a criminal offense to express the severity of road rage, while aggressive driving remains a traffic violation in most areas. Everyone gets frustrated while driving sooner or later due to traffic or the poor decisions of other drivers. However, the resulting anger can ruin your day, and if this anger lasts longer than a few moments, it leads to disastrous consequences. More than half of all drivers have experienced a surge of road rage at some point. However, when this happens, it’s not always going to be where someone bumps into the rear of your car or pulls a pistol. Still, tens of thousands of accidents are caused each year by aggressive driving, which leads to the cause of death of young children.

I immediately jumped over my sister so she couldn’t see what was happening because she was only 4 at the time. At this time the gun was pointing at me and my family but this is when my dad made the decision to protect his family that day. My dad shot him four times. He didn’t decide to put down the gun until after the third shot. Next thing I know me and my little sister are in the backseat of a police car but all I could think about was how grateful I was to be alive and having the ability to have a dad that has the courage to protect his family.

Before someone decides to be aggressive to you or other drivers around you while driving, they are the ones who most likely do not know the consequences to their actions or what’s about to come from them.