I was going through my local news feed and this story came up of a person from another local city involved in a hit while parked situation, the local person then pulled a gun on him when he was asked for insurance information and then fled the scene.
In these situations emotions can be charged if you’re the victim, on the flip side, the person at fault may attempt to flee by any means necessary.
Last year both of my kids where hit by uninsured motorists, the first totaled my daughters compact suv, guy was an illegal alien and uninsured, the sheriffs wouldn’t allow us to have contact and gathered the information that we’d have to get in a report and our insurance company would be able to access.
Then a wonderful gem from the hood hit my son, attempted to flee by trying to ram him and run him off the road. She was caught, charged, and still being prosecuted.
So my question is do you know how you would react when an unfortunate situation goes from bad to a really bad day?
The best advice would be to attempt to extricate yourself from the situation calmly and quickly if at all possible.
If I could not talk them down I would do what I have to to protect myself.
One thing to keep in mind in such a situation is you must have absolutely clean hands. If you were in any way engaging in a road rage sitaution that precipitated the accident, there’s a good chance that instead of self defense you could end up with both people/all people involved charged.
Also, while nearly every such event today will end up being videoed by onlookers, those videos almost always will catch only the end of the event, not what led up to it.
You can be perfectly right in such a situation and still end up charged and convicted so like all potential self defense encounters have the cleanest hands possible and remember we can only shoot when we have no other choice, not out of anger.
In the situation where your son had a wreck with a hood rat who then tried to escape by ramming his vehicle that would be a situation where you have a strong justification for the use of deadly force up to the point at which the attacker started to flee.
Shooting after that point can easily get you convicted of some form of murder or manslaughter.
Also remember re: video being all around you, watch what you say because words blurted out in fear/anger can and will be used against you especially as in most cases where only the tail end of the conflict ends up on video rather than the entire event.
I’m seeing more and more people using in car/dash cam’s for their own protection and that’s not a bad idea at all particularly as cheap as they are getting to be but it’s a double edged sword. If you’re in the wrong let’s just say you probably wouldn’t want that recorded and I’d certainly not volunteer the data, they only way they’d get it is prying it from my hands with a subpoena providing I could still find it.
If someone hits me and takes off, I’ll try to get a license number but it is just a car. If it is really serious, I would assume they aren’t running anywhere, except on foot.
The video camera’s can be great, but a double edged sword as @WildRose said. I witnessed a minor wreck yesterday afternoon. As I was on my way home, a car about 1/4 block ahead of me was driving in the travel portion of the road and another was going down the parking lane. The road has a decorative grass median between the east and west lanes and, at the end of the median, the car in the parking lane made a sharp left to make a U-turn. The guy in the driving lane swerved to the left into the median but caught the read door of the other car.
Both drivers got out, talked briefly to each other and looked over each others cars. I parked a few car lengths behind them and waited as they called the police and anyone else who they were calling. After they settled in, I waved the gentleman going straight over to my car and let him know I saw the entire event. He told me she said she had her turn signal on but he didn’t see it. I let him know that she didn’t and I should have the whole thing on video. While they waited for police, I ran home and downloaded the video to my phone and to a usb drive then went back to the scene. Police arrived a few minutes later and looked at the video. I offer the officer the thumb drive but she said save it for the insurance company. I gave it to the driver going straight.
After I got back to the scene, and showed the video to the police, the lady making the u-turn told the police her neck was sore and she was going to go see a doctor. She said something to the other driver about having his friend (me) there. I told her I had never met the guy before this incident. She gave me a dirty look and said yeah right. Funny thing is, after we met yesterday, I found out that I had sent several emails and texts to the guy in the past about some things that happened in our small city. He just so happens to be the mayor. As it turns out, I didn’t know who he was but I know who he is.
I’ll be waiting for calls from both of their insurance companies.