PINELLAS, FL– With a Go Pro strapped to his helmet, a motorcycle rider captured a terrifying road rage incident and posted it to YouTube.
It starts with another biker entering the frame, traveling eastbound on the Courtney Campbell Causeway, just as a BMW changes lanes.
The biker appears to slap the fender as he goes by. A few minutes later, two bikers box the BMW driver in.
You can hear the BMW driver yelling, “Stay right here! Stay right here! Hey, stay right here. Stay right here.”
The BMW driver straddles the front tire of one of the bikes in an attempt to keep that person from leaving.
A loud argument turns to fists as the bikers start hitting the BMW driver. At this point, a woman in the passenger side of the BMW threatens the bikers with a handgun.
The BMW driver then goes back to straddling the motorcycle tire.
Pinellas Park Police Sergeant Mike Lynch said both sides should have made better decisions. “After the first incident, that’s when you get on the phone. And that’s when you pick up that phone, you call 9-1-1,” Sgt. Lynch said.
Police could have been waiting on the Tampa side of the Courtney Campbell Causeway.
Instead, it turned into a fight.
“We’re looking at a woman who looks terrified for either a friend that was in the vehicle or a spouse of some sort maybe,” Lynch said. “We encourage the public to call about that type of reckless driving. It endangers all of us on the road, not just their own lives but everybody else that’s out there.”
At Next Motorcycles in Largo, employees watched the video.
“I don’t recommend getting out of the car no matter what. If it’s a car accident, stuff like that, getting out of the car and confronting anybody is really not a good idea. You never know what somebody has on them,” said an employee named Brian, who didn’t give his last name.
Ron Galletti is the producer of “Born To Ride TV.” He also viewed the video.
Galletii said the BMW driver and the bikers should have kept going. He doesn’t like to see the kind of high-speed passing present in the video.
News Channel 8 checked with the Florida Highway Patrol, the Clearwater Police Department, the Tampa Police Department and the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office. These agencies do not have any reports of this incident.
