An online outlet for road rage - Fast-growing site lets drivers vent -- but privacy an issue

So there's the Mercedes, driven by an oblivious woman who is chatting away on her cell phone and bam! She swerves across five lanes of Orange County traffic, heading for the exit, and then that poor little red car gets in the way ...

Here's another one, this time from Sunnyvale: "Driving while applying makeup (DWAM). Even though she needed it... bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic is not the place to apply it. Do us all a favor: Wake up earlier... arrive alive."

And from Nevada: "Get the... apparently trapper prefers ellipsis, thinks it's a little high in story for f-bomb out of the fast lane. It's not for slow cars. If you're gonna drive slow, then go to a parking lot and practice driving slow there."

Tired of clueless drivers? Want to vent a little, but realize that ramming your SUV into the offending Jaguar may not be the best way to deal with this?

Try www.platewire.com, a Web site created by two frustrated commuters who decided that the antics of their roadmates needed a public forum - someplace to snitch on all those idiots you see during the slog to work.

PlateWire, where the above rants originated, was "born out of frustration from years of driving alongside drivers who seem to have no concern with anyone's safety, including their own," founders Mark Buckman, 32, and Luke Sevenski, 27, announce on their site.

The way to lance that boil goes like this: Take down the license plate number of the reckless car; write an angry e-mail, including the plate number and time, date and place where this all happened; and send it in to PlateWire, which then posts the information along with the license plate number and invites responses from other...

My problem with this is the posting of the plate numbers. Several months ago, I read of a road rage story here in the SF Bay Area where some driver got mad at another driver who cut them off on the road, or something like that. They took note of the offending party's license plate number, and had a friend who worked at DMV look up the real name and address of the "offender". The "offendee" then proceeded to do all sorts of nasty things to harass the other person. I can't remember all of the details, but it seems they either started making frequent threatening phone calls, or actually went to the person's house and got physical with them or their property. Either way, the "offendee" wound up both in the news, and in a great deal of legal trouble, as did the DMV employee who provided the information.

However, I wonder how often DMV employees, or others with access to DMV information, provide this information to unauthorized parties, and never get caught?? I'll bet it is fairly often, given the high number of employees these agencies have.

So, while I am approving of the need to vent on-line, given all the nut cases who live in the big cities, and given that a lot of people probably have personal "connections" at DMV, I would be concerned about the abuse potential, especially if the person named in a "rant" was actually innocent. Given the fools who live around here, I can see "vigilante potential".

I would think that one can vent on-line without posting license plate info. If it is necessary to record the license plate of the offending vehicle, let that information be given to law enforcement, who has the legal power to do something about it.

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IF YOU ARE NOT PASSING, GET OUT OF THE LEFT LANE!!!!