Road rage and deadly force

We had an interesting conversation while shopping over the weekend. Traffic was busy, and at one point Michael switched lanes, where there was a perfectly good opening. He used his turn signal, and traffic was moving slowly enough that no one had to slam on brakes to make room for us. However, the driver behind us did not appreciate our invasion of what he apparently considered his privacy bubble, and expressed his disapproval most strongly and sustainedly. He honked loudly and repeatedly, flashed his lights at us, and gunned his engine while tail-gating us closely, for perhaps fifteen seconds. 'Temper, temper!' I said. 'Bite me,' Michael said.

Nothing further came of it, fortunately, but Michael remarked later, 'So if he had started ramming us, would that have occasioned me hopping out and shooting him?'

'Surely not!' was my first reaction. 'I don't think that would count as self-defense.'

Michael pointed out that the supersize truck was substantially bigger than our car, and could have totaled our car had it gotten violent. Such aggression would constitute deadly force. I wasn't sure that we would really have been at risk of death under such a circumstance. After all, we were seatbelted in, right?

'If he had really started coming after us, he could have rammed us, set the car spinning, and easily crumpled through the body of the car, killing us. Or he could have rammed the car off the overpass.'

'Well, but by the time you had jumped out of the car to shoot him, you would be free of the car and the imminent danger would have passed, right?'

'If we were outside of the car, we would be sitting ducks. It's much easier to run down and kill a pedestrian. So if we were getting out of the car, it would be to stop him.'

Next I thought that jumping out of the car, smashing the driver's window, and yelling, 'Stop or I'll shoot!' would be enough to halt his rampage. (I'm always of the opinion that the mere sight of a gun should stop an attacker dead in his tracks. Michael always reminds me that the only way you can be sure of stopping an attacker dead in his tracks with a gun is by shooting him. 'If you pull a gun, you have to be prepared to use it. Pulling a gun without intent to use it is worse than useless - it's an invitation to wrest the gun from you.') I also suggested the possibility of dialing 911 as soon as the attack started - 'Help! I'm being rammed by a vehicle - license plate ### - if I get out he'll run me down and if I stay he'll wreck my car, not to mention me - what should I do?' Michael observed that there wouldn't be time to get any police help from a 911 call, and that you don't call 911 to ask permission to shoot someone in self-defense.

Hmmm. Is puzzlement. If I were certain that we were at risk of being killed, then certainly shooting in self-defense would be justified. Next I thought that the problem arose from determining the intent of the aggressive driver. But even that doesn't cover it. He could be so angry that he was actually out to kill us, or he could just be expressing his anger such that killing us was an unintended side-effect. 'Deadly force' doesn't mean force applied with the intent to make you dead, but force with the capacity to make you dead.

Well, I guess it's a good thing he didn't start ramming us.