Even dogs are not safe from road rage drivers!

A Bichon Frise - NOT Leo.

Hundreds of innocent people, maybe more, are killed a year by upset drivers who become murderers the minute they get behind the wheel of their vehicles. Ironic to think the spokesman for road rage are not human beings but an innocent little white dog named Leo.

The dog was a ten-year-old Bichon Frise who belonged to driver Sara McBurnett in San Jose, Calif. The beloved pet lost its life when it was picked up and thrown into oncoming traffic by an irate driver last month.

McBurnett admitted rear ending a guy’s black sport-utility vehicle with Virginia license plates with her station wagon in a story by Washington Post reporter, Michael D. Shear, that appeared in the March 12, 2000 edition of The Dallas Morning News.

“I was going to say ‘sorry’ and apologize,” McBurnett said in the article.

But the killer, described as a “wiry man in his late 20s or early 30s with dark hair, a goatee and a baseball cap,” got out and started cursing at her.

“He seemed irrational,” she said in the story. “He didn’t take me on. He took on my little dog. What a coward.”

“It was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen,” said one witness, a San Jose web developer whose name wasn’t used in the article, adding the guy got back in his car soon after.

“It looked like he was kind of debating what to do,” he said. “He went into the right turn lane and took off.”

According to the story, police at the time were pursuing the incident as an animal cruelty case with a $5,000 reward being offered for tips leading to the arrest of the suspect. The amount went from $5,000 to $40,000 in a matter of days as radio listeners and dog lovers from around the San Jose area and around the world sent pledges to a local station which enlisted the help of a humane society.

I first heard about the story March 3 on exite.com under the heading “Oddly Enough News.”

The story made me ill. It was even worse the following week when “Inside Edition” did a segment about McBurnett, the dog and the bizarre incident.

I could tell watching the segment that it was meant to play on people’s emotions as the sad, somber music was heard in the background and the camera zoomed in often on the portrait of Leo, his tongue sticking out to form a smile. I must say I had a lump in my throat after seeing it.

I would have thought the tabloid press was going too far with a story like this but then McBurnett asked on the “Inside Edition” segment, “What if this had been someone’s child?”

She has a point.

If some lunatic out there with serious personal problems is willing to grab someone’s beloved pet by the neck and throw it into oncoming traffic because they got rear ended, who is to say that person wouldn’t do the same thing to an infant or child?

When people called into San Jose radio shows, some listeners on the “Inside Edition” segment were quoted saying they’d like to throw the suspect into oncoming traffic and not stop.

Road rage, like kids carrying loaded guns to school, is becoming a rising epidemic with no clear solution. Last year, billboard signs were posted along Dallas highways that said something to the point of “Just keep it up with the bad attitude and I’ll make the traffic go even slower.”

It is obvious some advertising agency produced the clever sayings, but the messages were quoted by someone called “God.”

This year, a different approach is being taken to combat road rage. Billboard signs posted around the Dallas area ask drivers if they recall the ending of their favorite movie or if they remember their wedding day.

Some believe one way to cure road rage is to reconstruct the nation’s highways and make them wider. Personally, I think all that’s going to do is upset more idiot drivers who refuse to allow for such things to happen.

I am not an advertising major, but I do have an idea on addressing the issue of road rage. NBC could have a star from one of their hit television shows do another one of those “More you know” commercials. The station has been doing them for a few years now that feature stars like Frasier’s Kelsey Grammer and Law & Order’s Angie Harmon who offer tips like “talk to your kids.”

They can have a star from “Friends” introduce Leo the dog on a picture and talk about how he was the victim of someone’s road rage.

Perhaps he or she can add how some of the people watching this commercial might find it funny (because I know of some people who did find the incident humorous).

Then they ask the viewer to imagine, instead of a dog, this being their infant or child who is either assaulted or thrown into oncoming traffic.

The commercial could end with them saying something like “when someone on the road upsets you, take a deep breath and think about what you might do before doing it. Your actions could not only cost the lives of others, but your own as well.”

©4/19/00