A woman filmed the terrifying moment she thought she was being followed by a male driver after he snapped at her in a fit of unprovoked road rage.
Viktorya Marie, 30, was driving home from work on a rainy day in New South Wales and said she was sitting behind a car traveling below the speed limit.
“(It was) raining, like in peak traffic and there were cars behind me and he was hitting the brakes, trying to get me to hit him from behind, or other cars to hit me from behind,” she said in a TikTok video.
“The guy was literally trying to get me to follow him and stop. Like he was being very aggressive with his hand gestures.
Marie looked visibly shaken as she held her face and fought back tears.
She said the angry driver kept gesturing for her to stop.
“He kept motioning for me to follow him and stop, and I was like, ‘no, like I’m not doing that,’ that’s very unsafe,” Ms. Marie said.
She said she notified police to the driver and they told her to contact them if she thought he was still following her.
An Australian woman said male drivers can become extraordinarily aggressive towards women on the road.
‘I’m shaking, I called the police and everything. It was that bad. “I’ve never experienced that in my life,” he said.
“I’m afraid he’s following me.”
Marie said it was a common experience for female drivers.
“As soon as (men) see it’s a female, they want to become arrogant and want to abuse the girl,” she said.
Other social media users said they had faced similar incidents in the comments.
‘There are so many violent and tormented men in this world. “It’s so sad that this has to happen while you’re innocently driving to get home safely,” one woman wrote.
“(This) has happened to me many times, (as) a girl in her Ps,” another girl wrote.
“Man or woman, there is no excuse to attack someone like this on the road and make them feel unsafe,” said another viewer.
He said men become “high and mighty” when they rage against female drivers on Australian roads.
“I’m so glad you didn’t stop and you were smart to be careful not to go straight home,” another woman added.
A young woman said she had been confronted in a similar incident with a horrible ending.
“Someone followed me home and smashed my window with a hammer, all because I wasn’t going over 30 km/h like they wanted. “I’ve never been so scared in my life that everything would be a disaster,” she said.
Last year, a Melbourne chief executive said she was walking innocently down a busy city street when two men left her feeling unsafe in her own country.
Co-founder and CEO of health and wellness app Kic, Laura Henshaw, said two men in a car intentionally slowed down to yell lewd comments about her body.
Henshaw said he was initially angered by the men’s booing, but was shocked when they repeated the act three more times along a half-mile stretch of road.
In a video posted to TikTok, Henshaw said she felt like the first time men tried to get her attention they “almost thought it was a compliment.”
He added that his experience showed that men felt entitled to impulsively yell at strangers.
Henshaw said she felt increasingly insecure as the couple continued to make comments such as “you look good” towards her.
“Let me tell you, calling me ‘sexy baby’ (from) the car doesn’t make me feel good,” she told her followers.
The young businesswoman said the act makes women feel “insecure… violated… (and) objectified.”