Next time you're "road raging", you might want to calm down long enough to make sure it's not you that's the dangerous driver.
A Tampa, Florida man's road rage was captured via today's ever-present smartphone camera as he angrily pulled his truck up alongside the other vehicle he felt had wronged him. After hanging out the window, the man began holding up and shaking his middle finger at the driver. Just seconds later the video captured the truck speeding off in front of the car and moments later losing control and crashing into a palm tree.
According to the YouTube post, the woman driving the car stated:
This happened to me on SR 41 in Tampa on Monday March 24th. This pathetic excuse for a human being tailgated me for about three minutes. After about a minute, and me shaking my head, I pulled out my phone and started recording. He initially fled the scene of the accident, but thanks to this video he has been caught and charged. I've never seen Karma come back so fast.
The uncovered aspect to this story is the fact the woman capturing the video of the crash is guitly as well, as she is clearly alone in her vehicle and is video taping while driving - a distracted driving violation if ever there was one. Between the two of them it's a wonder no one else was victimized by the extremely poor judgement shown by both drivers in this instance.
It is estimated that road rage, aggressive/distracted driving is a factor in 56% of fatal crashes in the U.S. according to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.
The good news, if there ever is any when it comes to road rage, is that a team of European car researchers are working on an in-car infrared camera system that tracks your facial expressions while you're behind the wheel and picks up that quick expression change from joyful to vengeful that occurs when road rage sets in. The camera is programmed to track what the researchers deemed to be the seven most universal emotions that our faces show - fear, anger, joy, sadness, disgust, surprise and suspicion. The algorithms pick up what are considered to be the very specific facial muscle movements of these common emotions.
The system is currently being developed by EPFL's Signal Processing 5 Laboratory (LTS5) in association with PSA Peugeot Citroen. Hopefully help for road ragers everywhere, along with the rest of us, is on the way.
