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A motorist has been praised online after describing how she dealt with a pair of angry drivers battling it out for the parking space she was about to vacate.
Road rage appears to be showing no signs of abating in America with a 2021 survey by insurance comparison website The Zebra noting that while 35 percent of people are driving less today, 20 percent of motorists are experiencing more frustration on the road.
A serious waste of time and emotional energy, the reality is that venting frustrations at fellow drivers does little to appease the situation at hand and plenty to exacerbate it.
Perhaps that's why one driver's alleged response to a pair of motorists vying to take her space in a busy parking lot has been so warmly received on Reddit.
In a post upvoted 9,500 times, a woman writing under the username strywever recounted her experience after returning to her car with a friend following a busy day of Christmas shopping.
The festive season is always a busy time for mall parking lots, but tensions boiled over as the pair attempted to exit their space.
"As I began backing out, a car was slowly pulling past right behind me," the woman explained. "The driver saw my brake lights and realized she'd lucked out. All she had to do was back up and let me out, and my primo spot would be hers."
Unfortunately for the other driver, the motorist just behind her had also spotted the woman was about to leave and, as the Redditor put it "neither of them was budging."
What followed was something akin to a road rage standoff, with the woman recalling how "the two drivers' faces got redder and redder as they honked, revved their engines to make the other driver think were going to plow right into their car if it didn't move."
"Trapped" in the parking space while the two cars duked it out, the woman said that "more than five minutes of this craziness" passed before she and her friend decided they had "had enough."
"We looked at each other and smiled," she said. "Then we got out of the car, locked it back up, and waved at the two disbelieving parking warriors as we headed back into the mall for a much-needed drink and a bite to eat."
The response drew widespread praise on social media with one Reddit user, posting as An-Old-Fart, calling it a "totally petty and totally awesome move." Dolphin_Life_64 agreed it was "the perfect solution" with abletofable adding: "I would have done the same. If you can't get out, they can't get in."
Others, like Mr_Ambulancedriver, shared their own experiences of similar. "I once was putting stuff in my car and a guy was waving to show I had to rush," they said. "So I decided I needed lunch, put stuff in there and went to lunch."
AsukaBunnyxO went through similar. "A dude was trying to force me to back out instead of pulling out forward so he could take the spot after," they said. "He wouldn't budge when I indicated 'No' So I removed the keys from the ignition and placed them on the dashboard and made eye contact and smiled."
Dragonstkdgirl added: "If someone is rude and can't wait thirty seconds for me to get in my car and get situated before backing out of a parking spot, I put it in park and finish a Netflix episode."
Newsweek reached out to u/strywever for comment. We could not verify the details of the case.
About the writer
Jack Beresford is a Newsweek Senior Internet Culture & Trends Reporter, based in London, UK. His focus is reporting on ... Read more