“Battle scars fighting traffic injustice”

Photo by PoPville flickr user Erin

“Dear PoPville,

My little red scion of truth suffered her first battle scar yesterday after 8 years on the streets of DC. I’m a big proponent of following the rules, especially in a dense city. Dense societies need rules to function otherwise it’s just chaos. So, yesterday while driving home from work a light blue mini-van/SUV thing with Virginia plates was trying to turn right off westbound I street onto 14th St. N while they had a red light. Now traffic was already backed up into the intersection and while we still had a green light, the light ahead had not yet changed. Driving this route every day I knew the light ahead would change in time to let all the current cars in the intersection move out of the intersection before the I street traffic got their green light. This blue thing, however kept trying to push his way into the 14th street traffic in front of me.

Being the stickler for rules, I inched forward as he would leave cars behind me in the intersection after the light changed. He didn’t have right away and it would have forced other cars to block traffic; block the box. Well blue thing wasn’t having it, although he wasn’t let in there, he caught up at 14th and K and tried pushing me out of my lane. Then at Thomas Circle he sat in the hatched zone in front of the Donovan Hotel parking and zoomed into the circle trying to push me out of my lane again. He disappeared somewhere around the circle. And I assumed the petulant driver had finally ended his temper tantrum. No, he tried the same around the Rhode Island Avenue intersection and again up by R St. Seeing that I was immovable and ignoring him, he finally turned directly into me at the U and 14th intersection and then sped off eastbound down U St. I got home a few minutes later and saw a nice linear dent down the driver’s side and showed it to the responding 3rd district police officer, unfortunately I didn’t get the plates. I’m asking that anyone with additional information or plates to contact the 3rd district police. Thanks.”