Perpetually Sporadic

Part I

Last Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2011, I stood in front of a judge and calmly listened as the man to my right pleaded my case.
I know what you’re thinking….”What could Rachel have done to end up in this position?”. I know you’re thinking it because it’s what I’ve been thinking since last May.
I suppose I should start at the beginning.

In May, 2010, I was taking a summer class at the local Community College. The first week of class I was still working on getting my timing to the college down. On Wednesday morning of that first week of class I was driving to the college when a man in a minivan tried to run me off the highway. You see, before I’d entered the highway, he became frustrated with me because I chose to slow down and stop at a red light instead of turning and running the red light(he must have been in a hurry).  As I entered the highway, he followed(all while honking his horn and waving his middle finger in the air at me). Figuring that he wanted to pass me I moved from the right lane to the middle lane of the three lane highway. He didn’t pass me, but made quite the effort to get directly behind me. At this point I was starting to grow concerned by his actions. I noticed that the left lane was slowing tremendously to the point where traffic would stop soon. Seeing a chance for me to move over to the left lane where he couldn’t follow, I maneuvered to the left and waited for him to pass me by…but he didn’t. I started to panic as I saw him pull up next to me, window now down, finger flailing in the air, unintelligible words leaving his angry mouth. I must have been moving at barely 5 MPH in the left lane with no chance of escape. I watched in horror as he started to turn his van into my car. Each time he tried to move his car into mine, I swerved off the road onto the left shoulder of the highway. He repeated this action until he actually succeeded in hitting my car with his minivan. After he hit my vehicle he moved in front of my car and continued to wave his finger at me. Without hesitation, I grabbed my ever so handy iPhone and took a photo of his car from behind which included his license plate. I them proceed to call 911. I barely remember the call, but I know I was crying and I know that I was able to give the dispatcher my exact location as well as a description of the man and the car(including his license plate number).  As I was speaking to the dispatcher, the man swerved across the lanes of traffic and exited the highway. When I told the dispatcher, she asked me to pull over onto the right side of the highway and await a State Trooper. I followed her instructions and waited for the Trooper to arrive.

Now wait a minute…what about the above can possibly lead to me having to stand before a judge? Aaah, the beauty of the legal system in New Jersey. Moving on…

When the Trooper arrived he asked me what had happened. I explained to him in full detail the events that had transpired.  He checked out the damage to my vehicle, looked at the photo of the minivan I had taken and asked me for a written statement.  When I had completed the statement he informed me that he’d track down the man and get a statement from him, complete his report, and have the report ready for me to pick up in two days. Relieved, knowing that this trooper was going to follow up on this report, I continued on to class.
Several days had passed and I finally made it in to pick up the report. I was thrilled to find that the Trooper located the man and found him to be 100% responsible for the accident. The report stated that the man was issued with two citations. One for leaving the scene of an accident, and the other for failure to report an accident….or something to that effect. I thought that was all that needed to be done, that justice had been served. I was wrong.

To Be Continued