Aggressive driver in Georgetown

[This is a good example on what to do when you encounter a person that I would say is recklessly endangering lives.]

On Aug 5th, 2008 at 6:29 PM, I encountered an aggressive driver who came up behind me on 39th St NW and started revving his engine. I had taken the lane and was traveling with traffic which was stop and go through all of the stop signs on 39th St. About 30 seconds later he completely ran me off the road into cars parked on the side and passed me at a high rate of speed nearly striking me and another cyclist who was traveling more slowly ahead of me.

The driver sped off blowing through the next few stop signs to get away but I quickly caught up with him when he got boxed in at a red light and took out my iPhone and started taking pictures of his van. Despite being out of breath I was able to get in a couple of good photos of the driver and his license plates.

A half hour later when I got home I called 311 to report the incident to police. They sent an officer out to my house and took a report. I printed out some of the pictures I had taken earlier and the officer radioed the tags and a description of the driver into headquarters. The officer said they where operating in “all hands on deck” mode so all officers would be on the lookout for the van and pull the driver over and check his ID if they spotted him.

The officer said that was all he could do. There was no incident number and he didn’t even take my name. The officer was glad that I wasn’t hurt. I simply wanted to report the incident and create a paper trail in case his driver would hurt someone in the future.