Following the wildly popular and terrifyingly viral road rage story (and update) we’ve had this statement from ACT Policing:
A comprehensive search of ACT Policing indices has yielded nil results for the incident as described.
Police would urge the original complainant in this matter to contact ACT Policing Operations on 131-444.”
We’re somewhat concerned this might have been a very sophisticated spoofing effort with comments pre-seeded months in advance and wonder who did it, and in which academic journal it will appear. But at this stage all we can say for sure is we really don’t know what’s going on with this one.
Our sincere apologies to anyone who has been inconvenienced.
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But I read it on the internet; it must be true!
I must admit, while the incident as described was somewhat alarming, it was equally alarming at how many people were so quick to accept the account as gospel.
Who knows, it may well be legit, but there’s always two sides to a story, so perhaps it’s worth taking the time to consider the alternative before joining the mob, hey!
Oh and just after I went around Southern Canberra smashing headlights of all silver commodores and a couple of silver VWs (my bad)….actually come to think of it, a few might have had NSW plates, one was a Ute and another was one of those motorized scooters for the elderly (but the rider did look young and bogan like in my defence).
Since this is looking more and more like a very sophisticated spoofing effort with comments pre-seeded months in advance, and thus short of hard facts, I wonder if RA could have a go at bringing to light what facts are available?
For example one poster professed to be in the family who own the rego number in the original story. Perhaps they could prove this fact to JB with some evidence, which would go a long way to confirming that they are in fact not psycho road ragers but the victims of a set-up?
On that subject, if the originally quoted rego number identifies a genuine vehicle, it seems more likely to me that the set-up was intended to cause problems for someone, rather then an academic exercise in trolling.
It sounds like a slightly more elaborate version of the various alarmist “crime alert” hoax emails that have been around forever – women being abducted in shopping centre carparks, innocent motorists being killed after flashing their lights at gang members, etc. Interesting to see how it works in this setting – I’m sure there were plenty of people who had their doubts about the story, but were reluctant to call bullshit because of the traumatic events described therein. Whether it was opportunistic use of earlier comments by unrelated posters or a grand scheme stretching across months – well, the IP addresses may or may not answer that.
Well, I think we started to smell something wrong early in the threads when we didn’t get a response to our request for an AFP Job number. If it’s a ‘scam’, then it’s a complex one obviously done for some reason.
Whatever, we do need to know what and why I think.
probably distributed by the gun lobby. ie if we all had guns, we could defend ourselves against …. oh, that’s right, they were figments of my imagination… ghosts, vampires, bogans.
arck… I feel so dirty… :/
WoodenAgent said :
No, its a metaphoric story by the clubs associations, with the female driver the clubs, the 4 month old their patrons and the silver SS, the govt coming along with their un-australian ‘licence to punt’ and smashing in all the windows.
WoodenAgent said :
WTF is this about? Seriously, I don’t understand how we got from the OP to this raving out of the blue about “the gun lobby”. What are you on about?
The story doesn’t add up:
1. At the right turn, the lanes merge soon after. To be tailgated, wife’s vehicle would have had to speed ahead of other vehicle.
2. At turning lane, wife’s vehicle pulled up beside instead of behind, unwise if vehicle was driving dangerously anyway.
3. If wife’s car got far ahead and it took a few kilometers for aggressive vehicle to catch up, extremely high speed must have been involved by wife, again, unwise.
4. If it took a few kilometers for them to catch up, wife should have reached AMC or the Servo already if going south on Monaro Highway.
This was surely a prank. Given the problems with the facts above though, it was not well thought out.
creative_canberran said :
I disagree. It was very, very well thought out. It had people sucked in, wannabe vigilantes with the car rego written down in their cars, went viral on Facebook. It was very well done.
creative_canberran said :
A bit late now to point this out.
The Frots said :
I suspect the car is real and that the driver of the car pissed off the author of the OP. He thought ‘what better way to elicit sympathy, community support and outrage all in one than to make up a story about four hooligans attacking my wife and baby.’
Notice he asked for any information to be passed onto him and not the police? Hmmm.
Tooks said :
Good points – we really do need to understand what happened here!
Hank said :
Credit to Frots for being on to this first. Can’t believe I was suckered in. Well played OP, well played.
If it wasn’t aimed specifically at a real person (the car owner or family), then perhaps it was a planned piece, maybe a school assignment on how to use social media? Or someone doing a psychology or journalism course, with an assignment on manipulation?
colourful sydney racing identity said :
Hey CSRI, there were a few I think – and don’t worry about being ‘suckered in’ initially – hell, I was right in there! Just really curious now as to what this was about, why post this????
Sadly, if we get another which is in fact genuine, we will all have in the back of our minds what happened here. The potential for this site to help the community is enormous – and it gets threatened when this type of fool does this. And why?
Damn………………..I want to know!!!
The story does sound a bit extreme. But the car does exist and its driver is a douche bag. Traveling from Western Creek on Hindmarsh drive I regularly see this idiot and his reckless driving. Last wednesday he overtook me on the wrong side of the road as I slowed down in order to turn left off Hindmarsh. It’s a shame he isn’t really public enemy #1, be he is definitely another Mully in the making
tonkatuff82 said :
How do we know this is true? Is it part of the whole elaborate plot?
How can I trust the internet anymore?
amarooresident3 said :
If you can’t trust the internet, you’ll have to go back to Encyclopedia Britannica
The Traineediplomat said :
…but Wikipedia told me that Encyclopedia Britannica is full of errors!
Erg0 said :
So who do you believe?
Erg0 said :
[citation needed]
You can stick the story in your Funk & Wagnalls then…
Credit to Tooks who called bullshit on this one quite early I believe.
amarooresident3 said in #19
“How do we know this is true? Is it part of the whole elaborate plot?
How can I trust the internet anymore?”
You can’t trust the internet suggest you go back to the main stream media and start buying the “Telegraph” and “The Australian” they would never “make stuff up”.
tonkatuff82 said :
I suspect the OP had similar experience or two and used the post as some kind of outlet… But then, I fell for it hook, line and sinker… So what do I know :/
Thumper said :
+1 Agreed.
The Frots said :
My money is still on there being an element of truth in it! I’m still on the lookout!
Captain RAAF said :
Yeah, the car seems to be coming up a fair bit with the odd ‘aren’t they bastards’ post. But the absence of important details like ‘police involvement’ doesn’t blow my skirt up I’m afraid. If your out there Captain, be careful!