YOU are late. The traffic is solid. It's the end of a highly stressful week. You've moved ten centimetres in the last 15 minutes. And, just as the traffic starts to get going, some idiot pulls out in front of you and you have to stamp on your brakes.
Quite naturally, like increasing numbers of Hong Kong motorists, your first instinct is to leap out of your car and vent your frustration by putting him straight.
'I often see people at each others' throats,' says Lam Tai-yip, a taxi driver. 'One Friday night in Pokfulam, the traffic was moving like a snail and the two cars in front of me were getting very silly, fighting over the same patch of road. The car behind nearly rammed the one in front which wouldn't let him pass.
'Then, all of a sudden, they both slammed on their brakes, the two guys got out and, wham, they started hitting each other. They didn't look like thugs, one of them was in a suit. They kept going at it and became entangled like boxers and then they both fell in a ditch. And they just kept at it.' This week the case came to court of a minibus driver, Chan Ping-keung, who claims an attack provoked by his driving was so severe, he was blinded in one eye and sustained multiple chop wounds.
Chan says two men pulled up beside his bus in a car on Castle Peak Road in July, 1994 and started swearing at him for driving carelessly and hit him in the face. Four other men joined in and beat Chan up so severely he needed emergency hospital treatment and can no longer work.
Such incidents may be extreme but 'road rage' is not unusual in Hong Kong. Police and driving associations are finding enraged motorists are attacking each other not just verbally but with their fists.