Too many drivers hit road ready to do battle

By DIANE STEINLE

© St. Petersburg Times,
published August 12, 2001

Cleveland Street at Aurora Avenue is a placid part of Clearwater, shaded by big trees, dark and quiet at night.

The sound of the crash, residents said, was like an explosion. The noise ricocheted off the houses and shattered the slumber of the people inside. They ran to their windows and their front lawns to discover that death had visited their neighborhood.

And for the most senseless of reasons.

Sixteen-year-old Dane Scarborough, headed to Clearwater Beach with three friends in their 20s, was driving a red Pontiac Grand Am on Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard Tuesday when a white Jeep Cherokee cut into his lane. Scarborough gave chase, pursuing the Cherokee through neighborhoods at speeds up to 60 mph as its driver tried to get away.

Suddenly, the Cherokee was in the clear. The Grand Am had slammed into one of those stately oaks along Cleveland Street in a crash so violent that Scarborough and front-seat passenger Christine Adamson, 23, were killed. The two 23-year-old passengers in the back seat, Vito Knighton and Jenanne Johnson, were injured, but will survive.

Johnson, in interviews with local newspapers, told a now-classic tale of road rage. Scarborough didn't like being cut off by the Cherokee. Egged on by Adamson, who owned the Grand Am, Scarborough chased the offender and the two yelled obscenities out of the windows, Johnson said.

No doubt they enjoyed the feeling of power and the rush of adrenaline they got from driving fast and frightening the other driver, who apparently did not intend to cut them off.

Two weeks before that Clearwater accident, Sandra Pilawski, 42, was driving on Interstate 275 in Pinellas County when she decided to pass a slow-moving truck in her lane. According to reports, she signaled and moved left, in front of an oncoming Ford Tempo driven by a young male. The driver of the Tempo veered around and in front of Pilawski's SUV, then slammed on his brakes.

Pilawski jerked the wheel and lost control of her vehicle, which flipped over and over. She suffered deep cuts and a broken bone in her neck, and afterward lay in her hospital bed wondering about the driver who sought revenge that way, who must have watched the accident unfold in his rearview mirror.

"What has made you so angry and malicious to do that to another human being?" she asked.

Whatever it is, it appears to be epidemic in Pinellas County.

Incidents of rudeness and impatience on the roadways are so commonplace now that we just shake our heads and move on. Have you, like me, gotten sick of angry, aggressive drivers blowing their horns or gunning their engines to try to make you drive like they do? Sometimes I want to ask them, "Are you stupid or what? Do you know how many people in this county would be hurt or killed if we all drove like you?" Don't they care about the risk to life -- their own and others'?

On a recent rainy evening around sunset I was driving on Nebraska Avenue in Palm Harbor, preparing to turn right onto a side street. Two young teenage girls were walking along Nebraska and were just three or four steps from the side street. Because they were walking under umbrellas and talking animatedly to each other, I figured they might not see me turning, so I paused, my blinker signaling to traffic behind me my intention to turn right.

Sure enough, the girls stepped out into the side street without even a backward glance. Had I made the turn without pausing first, they probably would have been hit.

But the fool in the car behind me couldn't stand waiting even those few seconds. He lay on his horn, startling both me and the girls.

Who among us hasn't seen almost daily examples of such drivers impatiently cutting in and out of traffic, edging up on people's bumpers, angrily cursing other drivers, or just traveling way too fast for conditions?

Aggressive driving is rampant on Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard, the main thoroughfare to Clearwater Beach for westbound traffic, and especially on weekend nights. Many of the cars are loaded with young people in show-off mode. There is lots of speeding motorcycle traffic, too. If you drive the road late on Fridays and Saturdays, you are almost certain to see or have a close call. Gulf-to-Bay may be Clearwater's gateway thoroughfare, but it is increasingly hazardous on weekend nights.

Those kinds of aggressive, impatient drivers are bad enough, but they are in a different class from people like Dane Scarborough and the unidentified Ford Tempo driver who slammed on the brakes in front of Sandra Pilawski.

Those people are using their cars as weapons to frighten or seek revenge on motorists who don't drive properly, in their view. They are enforcers of their own road rules. And what they do is no less threatening, no less potentially deadly, than if they picked up a loaded gun and went hunting for their enemies.

Some areas of the nation have seen success at slowing aggressive driving and reducing incidents of road rage with a three-pronged attack: driver education, increased police activity and tougher laws.

Whatever is being done in Pinellas County, it isn't enough.

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