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Thread started by Roadblock at 02.24.09 - 11:44 am
5xxrxxfxxnxxoxx1xx1 mercedes benz convertible goatee driver sunglasses black hat. Beige paint job
Just need some place to store this info. I was threatened and run off the road at franklin and vermont. Waiting for police. Fat football fan looking guy with a passenger who looked like stuck in 80s hair do light tan hair color porn do style.
I'm fine. He didn't even fade me I was able to anticipate his move and avoided it by turning out into the cross walk so I didn't crash. He also swiped me on franklin really close and yelled at me to get out of the way. I was riding out of the door zone and I hold my position even when there are no parked cars at the moment. He was apparently expecting me to swerve in every time there was a break in parked cars.
Taking the cops a long time to get here of course.
Last time some shit happened to me, I ended up waiting for the cops for 40 minutes, only to have to flag one down who didnt even know i was waiting for them. one of them even took my report seriously, and in the end i was in such a state of shock, i got the plate number wrong.
to explain. the cops showed up, scolded me for not having a helmet on... then told me that driving at someone in a threatening manner is only a traffic violation and since they did not witness it, they cant take a report...
having an earlier report from a similar incident is probably going to help them show intent in the mandeville incident. If this guy was that aggressive he may do it again and you want to leave a paper trail.
I think there has to be physical violence for assault to have occurred right?
anyway, like I said I didnt fall off the bike or get hurt in anyway, but I just wanted there to be a record of this guy casueing problems and driving in a menacing threatening way. when he zoomed past he got caught at the light at vermont and as I approached him on the left he opened his door assumedly to try and scare me off by pretending to want to fight or to door me but when I got right up next to his car he closed the door and just jawed a whole bunch at me. then as I was moving with the green light he swerved at me again in a threatening manner.
As everyone else says, file a police report that you were assaulted by this person in their vehicle and file a report that the officers would not take a report for assault. It's no different than if i threaten you with a knife, baseball bat, gun etc... Even if i don't touch you the threat is still there and the cop does not need to see that to take a report and follow up on it. How is threatening you with a vehicle any different? Oh and call Stephen Box. He will give you some info if you need it on a good way to handle it. Hit me up if you need his number or email address.
As far as I know, the DMV won't just give you somebody's name. They can't, because of the Driver's Privacy Protection Act, passed by Congress after the actress Rebecca Schaeffer was murdered by a guy who had gotten her address from the DMV. The info is still available to licensed Private Investigators, though, if you want to go that route...
I've actually been confused about what laws apply to "close calls" such as this. Once you get through it, it might be a good idea to put this advice in the form of a how-to for reporting road rage.
in the meantime, good luck reporting this asshole. i hope he gets the verga in jail.
This guy must've been high on something to verbally threaten a man of your size.
It would've been cool to see the little twerp step out of his car and you just push him around like a little kid taking a swing at the bigger bully.
In all seriousness, file a report in person and stay on top of it.
I realize there are priobably hundreds of road rage incidents in a day here in LA and the lapd doesn't have the time or resources to go after everything especially the ones that don't cause injury.. I just wanted to get it on record. I don't expect anything to happen legally....
I honestly thought these were a joke, but I can see where they'd be handy if someone was assaulting you with a car while shouting through an open window.
Well, I went to the police station to file a report, and they said again there was nothing that could be done. As long as the guy didn't hit me or cause harm it was just an incident of road rage and there's no report that can be filed....
"So that means that people can just drive around threatening cyclists with their cars and its not a crime?"
what if you told the office that he actually did run u off the road? would that have changed anything you think? wouldnt that be some sort of assault? or do you need hard proof?
There really needs to be more available tools to protect cyclists.... someone told me they have a system in germany where anyone can file a report on a wreckless driver and if enough reports are filed they have a system of punishment to deal with the driver.....
Our government is so weak and wimpy we can't afford the infrastucture for it.
"If you know someone who may no longer be able to drive safely, you may request that the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) review his or her driving qualifications. This form is provided for your convenience. If you prefer, you may write a letter to your local Driver Safety office to identify the driver you want to report and give your reason(s) for making the report. "
Seriously....that's like saying, someone can threaten and intimidate you with a bat, knife, gun, wrench, etc....but so long as they didn't apply that weapon they're in the clear.
Whatever apptitude tests they've got in place, man they aint workin; we're still gettin rejected highschool football meat patrolling our streets. Hamburgers!!
I got the names and badge numbers of the cops who were on the scene... I haven't been in a road rage incident like this in a long time. I'm seeing that the better way to deal is probably just get some pepperspray and spray the motherfuckers in the face when I catch em at the light and just be out real quick....
Many Thanks to a weak withering government that is barely for the people barely is by the people and can really only barely hang on..... bare bones government gets you bare bones protection on the streets.
i think the gov't is kinda the opposite. it's so fucking fat and stopped up. it's had too many strokes, it's arm isn't where the brain is telling it to be...................and it's ready for a massive fucking coronary.
and when it dies we'll all say, "well, it was for the best really, it was soiling itself towards the end there"
I really feel that people on bikes are viewed as unimportant / lower class citizens, unless you are clad in bright spandex and expensive gear. Otherwise, you are a jobless hippie who doesn't deserve any respect. Am I wrong?
Don't believe the hype. The government isn't bloated. If that were the case we'd have more than enough avenues to do all kind of shit including a program to fight road rage with enforcement. That's what a bloated government looks like. Our government is fuckin weak sauce. They couldn't enforce their way out of a paper bag. They are broke and dieing for money. Hope it all collapses soon so it can be re-built for the common people not for money interests.
There may be no criminal recourse, but that's why we have civil court -- to remedy situations criminal law just can't or won't. you could totally sue him in a tort action for assault. That's better anyways because that way you get money. In criminal courts, he'd just go to jail and you wouldn't get anything ya know..
If you felt like it & had the resources, you should totally sue him. If drivers start getting sued by cyclists, they'll be less likely to behave this way in the future for fear of getting sued...
Seriously! Pepper spray! I mean serious what the hell would happen? Dude files a police report? Ha. Cops come 30 mins later... hahah I'm gone down the next street having a beer at pure luck by the time our wimpy ass government responds. Hahah.
The skeleton of our government is for the people.
The majority of the meat that's grown around it is not.
That's why I say bloated; whether it be bloated of glut or of rot......I'm open to either theory.
I saw a guy get cut off by a car, and then the driver still had the audacity to honk at him. So the rider, who looked experienced, caught up with the car at the next light and non-chalantly pulled out a coin from his pocket and scratched the car up and down as he passed it, and proceed to go about his commute as if nothing happened.
I wish I had the resources to sue. Hahahah I wouldn't even try to cash in I would sue him for like $150 or something to cover my meditation classes.
So what's up with this bikexdatabase? How about I just post up a gif in asshole drivers.
Normally I would be over this, but after reading other posts like this and about how well they have the drivers in check over in europe - I guess the only option is to privatize the duties of our failure of a government.
Actually, what about lobbying for legislation that allows a special status to bicycle riders since they are human powered and more vulnerable than cars. It would allow for easier civil action against reckless drivers. The court would act like a small claims traffic court. Perhaps it could even be handled by small claims court itself. It wouldn't require attorney services much like citiations don't but allow a guy like me to sue for small punative damages as a result of road rage.
Oh wait, there's no budget to handle something like that cause our govt is broke.
Actually, you do - https://www.lasuperiorcourt.org/efiling/Login.aspx - file a claim in small claims court for up to $7,500, you can e-file from the comfort of your home. You'll have to track down the driver's name though.
http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp/smallclaims/ - more info.
The Los Angeles County Department of Consumer Affairs’ Small Claims Court Advisor Program provides information and counseling to litigants and potential litigants concerning all aspects of the Small Claims Court process, including case preparation, collection, venue, appeals and more. Call (213) 974-9759 for 24-hour recorded information or to speak with an advisor between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Click here for more information about the Los Angeles County Department of Consumer Affairs’ Small Claims Court Advisor Program.
people need to realize that taxes are a good thing and start paying them, especially the rich who do everything they possibly can to find all the loopholes and whatnot. Its like people here are raised to cringe at the thought of taxes, yet they want all the government services, but don't want to pay for them. They think the government runs on magic fairy dust or something...
Its in effiecient because its starving for funds to have updated equipment and good ratio per capita services....
The superior court should have more available judges, public defenders, and public servants.
That's bloat at its finest. Even with seemingly endless resources and budgets that trump those of most fortune 500s, the service still sucks, the equipment is pre 80s, etc.
Why? Because no matter how poorly they perform their job (as a whole, not pointing fingers here) they will always get a paycheck, always get a bailout. Like borfo said, 'no incentive' to do better.
Where as private companies that are forced to fight, sink-or-swim, are lean (opposite of bloat); each bit of cash goes somewhere, every penny is accounted for.
...especially the rich who do everything they possibly can to find all the loopholes and whatnot. Its like people here are raised to cringe at the thought of taxes, yet they want all the government services, but don't want to pay for them. They think the government runs on magic fairy dust or
damn, do we need to post that vid of that chick that thinks obama is gonna pay her rent and fuel her car??
the reason the rich (top 5% of wealth in the country) try everything they can to avoid paying taxes is because they pay something like 80% of the nations taxes. try that for 'fair.' they must have some serious bitch sessions!!!!
(my figures are rough, but it's something like that)
that tired ass excuse that they pay umpteen percent of the taxes of the nation - we should all be so lucky! The fact they are paying most of the taxes (proportionately less than the other 90% because they can afford loophole lawyers) means they are making most of the money too!
I like aspiring towards fairness... even if it isn't part of a "successful" government depending on what the definition of successful government is.... ?
without real figures this is all just jive, but I'm still game.
The fact they are paying most of the taxes (proportionately less than the other 90% because they can afford loophole lawyers) means they are making most of the money too!
Even with loophole lawyers (of which we all have access to at your local CPA, tax prep dude, or H&R block) they lose something like 60%+ of their income to taxes.
And, back to your statement, who cares if they're making most of the money!? Isn't the goal of taxes to allow each member of our nation to pay their share into the community pot so that the government can continue to function? Since when did others owe the rest of us anything? Since when did taxes serve as a means to skim off those who can 'afford it'?
The rich earned a bunch of money? Great!! Let 'em spread it around by spending it; put it back into the economy, don't let the government take it by taxing the crap out of it; they have no right to it and neither do you.
I would argue, that fairness is indeed what a successful government is measured by; that the amount of fairness that a government can provide to its people in terms of quality of life, participation in the political process, the economy, etc is exactly what qualifies it as a 'successful' government.
The United States itself trumpets its "fairness" all of the time. Calling ourselves the "land of opportunity" and all. Doesn't that phrase just drip of 'fairness' rhetoric? As in everyone has the same chance as everyone else, which is the definition of what? yeah, Fairness.
That is why corrupt nations are always condemned, nations that don't provide rights to their citizens, nations that are 'unfair' to people.
Haven't you heard of the Bill of Rights? There's what 26 amendments to the Constitution that are all there for one reason, to protect our rights, to keep it a Fair fight between the nation and citizens and between citizens and citizens.
Fairness not a hallmark of a successful government or economy? I say puh-shaw..
I like aspiring towards fairness... even if it isn't part of a "successful" government depending on what the definition of successful government is.... ?
it's like when you were a kid at the easter egg hunt. all the kids go out and find as many easter eggs as possible. Don finds 4 because he walked around, and Eric finds 14 because he was running.
after the hunt everyone is hanging out admiring what they'd earned, then the powers that be come over and take 5 of Eric's eggs and gives them to Don. Eric says, "wtf, i put the effort in for those f'n eggs. What gives!!"
The powers that be just point to their shirts, 'Easter Fairness Festival'
don't let the government take it by taxing the crap out of it; they have no right to it
Ok well if the government has no right to their money, then they shouldn't have access to police or fire department services, they cannot receive protection from the military, shouldn't be having water pumped to their houses, or whatever, basically receive no government services whatsoever. fucking rich people, they'll take whatever the government will give them, but don't want to pay for it. JACKALS
"Fairness not a hallmark of a successful government or economy? I say puh-shaw..
Fairness is THE hallmark."
It's a tough balance. You don't want to guarantee "fairness" by making everyone equally poor and equally miserable (which, while unpleasant would certainly be fair), but at the same time, you don't want the inequality to be so extreme that the wealthiest 1% of the population controls 38% of the nations wealth, while the poorest 40% own less than 1% of the nations wealth (as in the U.S. RIGHT NOW).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth
it's like when you were a kid at the easter egg hunt.
it's not like that at all. we're talking about people's lives here. people living homeless on the streets while others are living practically alone in 20 room mansions. It's not like a fucking easter egg hunt at all.
JB has brought the conclusion to the debate though.
- It's a balancing act -
But let's examine that last bit you wrote.
The United States itself trumpets its "fairness" all of the time. Calling ourselves the "land of opportunity" and all. Doesn't that phrase just drip of 'fairness' rhetoric? As in everyone has the same chance as everyone else, which is the definition of what? yeah, Fairness.
Providing opportunity is a great fairness. That's why we have laws against monopolies. But providing a fair start (very desirable) is not the same as making sure everyone finishes in 1st place (or finishes the race at all)
Haven't you heard of the Bill of Rights? There's what 26 amendments to the Constitution that are all there for one reason, to protect our rights, to keep it a Fair fight between the nation and citizens and between citizens and citizens.
I think that's a good point, but not in regard to the economy or the business of funding the government.
it's not like that at all. we're talking about people's lives here. people living homeless on the streets while others are living practically alone in 20 room mansions. It's not like a fucking easter egg hunt at all.
Don't try to twist my metaphor towards one of social empathy, you know that's not the example I was making.
This is why you can't operate on fairness.
Because when you deal in extremes the scale has to crash down either one way or the other.
Bear in mind that "rough" is usually Wingnut for "bullshit," and check figures accordingly.
PC
02.25.09 - 10:16 pm
While PC may subscribe to the Flying Ballz Theorem of Inaccuracy; when I say rough I mean kinda accurate, to the best of my memory, but I wouldn't go to print with 'em.
the cops at the Rampart station have let me file incident reports just fine -- its good for a record incase the driver later kills or injures someone.
i asked them about pepperspray and the cop said that "yeah you can use it in that circumstance... we don't arrest people for pepper spraying each other."
taking their keys out of the ignition and throwing them down the storm drain is another story tho...
Thank you, Nathan Snider, as always, for doing our dirty work.
Absent a breakdown by net worth, which is arguably a much better metric of what constitutes a "rich" person than annual income (ask anybody who lost a nice job to the recession) but which I was not able to dig up, we will have to use Adjusted Gross Income as reported to the IRS.
The information I'm going to use here comes courtesy of the right-wing National Taxpayers Union and is based on raw data from the IRS, so we can assume that the data we see is factually accurate, but that the percentile ranges were probably chosen in such a way as to bolster the NTU's central assertion that the poor get a free ride. Anywho, since we're here to examine Mr. Hair's claim that "the rich (top 5% of wealth in the country)...pay something like 80% of the nations taxes," it will have to do.
According to the IRS via the NTU, in 2006:
Those with the top 1% of AGI ($388,806+) paid 39% of Federal Income Tax.
Those with the top 5% of AGI ($153,542+) paid 60.14% of F.I.T.
Those with the top 10% of AGI ($108,904+) paid 70.79% of F.I.T.
Those with the top 25% of AGI ($64,702+) paid 86.27% of F.I.T.
So we find that the top 5% of earners pay about 60, not 80, percent of federal income taxes. To get to 80 percent, the income split would be somewhere between $64K and $108K annual income--let's estimate about $80,000*.
The problem here is painfully obvious: in order to use this data to justify the claim that "the rich" pay four out of every five income tax dollars, you have to do in your argument what right-wingers constantly accuse liberals and Democratic politicians of doing in their policy, i.e. define "rich" so far down in terms of income that it includes a substantial portion of what by any reasonable standard is actually the middle (or, if you like, professional) class. I'm going to stick my neck out and assume that the IRS's raw data doesn't distinguish between single and joint tax returns, which means that a lot of these six-figure incomes are likely the products of two reasonably healthy five-figure incomes. If la duderina finishes law school, eventually lands a decent (but by no means a superstar) job in entertainment law, and marries a unionized pipefitter**, it is not at all inconceivable that her new household would constitute one of those "rich" ten percent who pay seventy percent of the income taxes.
To be fair, this is probably at least as much a shortcoming of trying to use income as a sole measurement of wealth as it is of Eric Hair's "Pull It Right Out Of Your Ass" technique of information gathering. But, still.
* Maybe Alex Thompson or somebody can dig up the raw data and crunch it to get the true income split / AGI percentile where those on top pay 80% of F.I.T.
Income Category
2005 AGI
Percent of all income
Percent of income taxes paid
Top 1%
Over $364,657
21%
39%
Top 5%
Over $145,283
36%
60%
Top 10%
Over $103,912
46%
70%
Top 25%
Over $62,068
68%
86%
Top 50%
Over $30,881
87%
97%
Bottom 50%
Under $30,882
13%
3%
Source: IRS
That info is much easier to read at the source. Sorry I don't know how to paste a table.
What the shows is that even though the top 1% do pay 39% of all income taxes, they receive 20% of all income.
But that 39% of all income taxes is just that. Income taxes. Not social security tax. Not gas tax. Not sales tax. When you include all of those taxes the well off do even better, as Warren Buffet acknowledges in his famous remarks about his secretary paying a higher percentage of taxes on her income than he does on his.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu5B-2LoC4s
All of this really misses the point, as PC points out. None of this accounts for how those who have really benefitted from our country's successes, those with enormous stockpiles of wealth, are taxed. An income tax, even a progressive one like we have which taxes a higher percent as you make more money, to a large degree is really a tax on the poor. Especially an income tax in which income from work is taxed more heavily than income from capital gains and interest and dividends. If you make $1,000,000 from interest and dividends, you only pay 15% of that in tax. However if your work pays you $1,000,000, you pay almost 35% of that in income tax. And you don't have to pay social security on capital gains or dividents, making the burden on work that much greater!
Thus if you are wealthy and living off your trust fund, you have much lower taxes than someone who is working and attempting to improve society. And also thus, the actually wealthy sow discord below, keeping those below (anyone not living off their wealth) fighting amongst themselves about how much tax they paid while escaping paying much and receiving the most benefits.
An interesting attempt to tax appropriately is Georgism. Its a largely ignored economic thought promoted over a hundred years ago in which the only tax is a tax on land.
thats a great point about the capital gains tax breaks and various tax shelter properties and investments not getting taxed at regular wage income rates. thats bullshit. there should be one single uniform across the board income tax with a yearly inflation adjusted cost of living deductible. I bet taxes for everyone would be something like 20%
Careful what you wish for, RB. You would make a lot of poor people poorer with a stroke of the pen if everybody had to pay 20%.
Thanks, Greg B, for bringing up capital gains. I wanted to get into that, but I scrubbed it because my post was too long-winded already. The problem with capital gains, for our purpose, is that there doesn't seem to be any information available from the IRS about who is paying what portion of the capital gains tax revenue for any given year. The issue is further complicated by the fact that short term (<1 yr)capital gains are taxed by the Feds as ordinary income, and are therefore presumably already rolled up into the income tax data we have been looking at. We also run into the old income-vs-wealth problem, because capital gains taxes, by definition, are only paid when a gain is realized, i.e. an asset is sold.
Let's take a couple of really simplistic examples.
Example A: Reginald Richypants, a geezer with vast holdings in stock and real estate, many of them inherited, decides that he wants to take a trip around the world with his friends. He cashes out just over a hundred thousand dollars worth of stock that he bought for two grand back in 1947.
Example B: Donny Daytrader, a working class pipefitter with a giant penis and an Ameritrade account, reads on a message board that Sirius XM Radio (SIRI) is an amazing bargain at thirteen cents a share because all the pundits incorrectly think it is about to go bankrupt. At 10:00 AM he places a buy order for 80,000 shares (about $10,000). That afternoon, some really good news about the company comes over the wires and the price per share rockets to well over a dollar. Times being what they are, Donny decides to take his profit while he can: he sells all of his shares that same day for $110,000 and goes and makes a down payment on a cute little bungalow in West Adams for himself and his law student wife.
Neither man has any other significant buying or selling activity for the year.
Reginald is indisputably rich, but Donny was just lucky this one time. Yet they will report the exact same capital gains for the year, and to make things more complicated for us, Reginald will pay 15% capital gains tax on his gains but Donny will have to pay tax at a marginal income tax rate in the mid-twenties (actually, because he makes about $40,000 a year, some of it will be at one rate and the rest will be at another). Are your eyes glazing over yet? Mine are. Anyshit, the point is that examples like this are going to really screw up our stats if we try to use capital gains taxes paid as a measure of "richness."
"thats a great point about the capital gains tax breaks and various tax shelter properties and investments not getting taxed at regular wage income rates. thats bullshit. there should be one single uniform across the board income tax with a yearly inflation adjusted cost of living deductible. I bet taxes for everyone would be something like 20% "
No, what we need is a flat net worth tax. Everybody (and every corporation) with a net worth over X (say $100K) pays 4% of their net worth in taxes annually.
That would motivate economic productivity and keep the trustafarians from wasting away.
What would you do about the disincentive toward saving that this would cause (or am I misunderstanding something)? ISTM that this isn't a route you want to take at a time when so many people have negative savings and the economy is in ruin because (well, partly because) of excessive debt.
Anyway, I understand that the first $100K would be free, but I think that's setting it ridiculously low. There's something to be said for having a few years worth of living expenses socked away just in case some wacky, horrible, highly unlikely financial emergency happens. Like, oh I don't know, a massive global recession caused by years of irresponsible monetary policy, speculative asset price hyperinflation, and excessive debt-driven consumer spending.
did you report it? i commute through that area, and i get shit every single week from some dipshit in a luxury car. if you dont press charges, they will eventually injure or kill someone you know and run away. look what happened to mook!
we can't keep letting drivers get away with this shit because we need to get on with our lives. don't forget: if he assaulted you with a deadly weapon (his car), you have a right to defend yourself, and dont let any shithead cop tell you different.
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Ridazz Roulette!
I really feel that people on bikes are viewed as unimportant / lower class citizens, unless you are clad in bright spandex and expensive gear. Otherwise, you are a jobless hippie who doesn't deserve any respect. Am I wrong?
There's always a way to work smarter, not harder. People just need the incentive to make it happen.
Fuckin Zuma Dog man... I'm dissappointed. Now that he's running for mayor he's given up on the gangsta look and is trying to look legit.
I mean.... dude kind of creeps me out... this new look.... its not gangsta.... 
