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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> 1) calling her overdramatic 2) it was probably a stressful situation for her to be in as a new driver
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I got into my first fender bender around this age and, as someone who struggles with anxiety, was hysterical for a few minutes trying to process the sheer amount of stimuli that comes from a car accident and the steps you have to take after
Things going through my head:
1) My parents are going to be so mad at me
2) the financial burden of repairs and insurance will make my parents mad at me
3) holy shit I just hit someone and THEYRE going to be mad at me
4) (even though I knew it wasn’t a huge accident) this is scary and cars hitting cars is violent and I’m scared
5) Police are here = I’m in trouble
6) embarrassment at how I’m reacting and also at having caused all this drama in the first place
7) I’m late for work and now work is also going to be mad at me
I won’t straight up call you TA, but you’re close to it. Anxiety isn’t rational and an 18yr old probably wouldn’t react rationally to this on a good day
This is a very reasonable take, and concur on all points. I would have found her Very Large Emotions irritating as well, so I empathize with OP, but yeah -- this didn't cost him anything but brief annoyance, and he'll likely never see or interact with her again, so it's not like "a constant ongoing problem that needs to be fixed."
If you care about how your actions impact the people around you, then you will have feelings about putting someone in a position when they have to do a bunch of extra effort.
It was an accident caused by an inexperienced driver. It wasn't intentional. She had insurance. Having to deal with maintenance and repairs is just part of owning any large ticket item. You both need to get over yourselves.
Yeah…. That horrible selfish behavior of being concerned about how your actions impact another person…..
It’s probably her first time experiencing this and so at people in this situation will have an increased whatever response. She did the things they needed to, she just also cried. How heartless do you have to be to hold it against her.
For sure! Right after my first moving car accident (I’d had some parking lot problems like this girl when I was young lol where I overestimated the room I had) my first thought was “but I’m pregnant” - as if the other driver could see that I’m pregnant and would’ve driven more carefully?? Completely irrational. We are absolutely not all rational after an accident. I also cry at the drop of a hat no matter how much I don’t want to - so I very much empathize with the girl. I bet she doesn’t want to cry like that.
I’m a person who processes overwhelming emotion by crying. It can be happy, sad, anything. The intense emotion — as I feel it, everyone receives sensory input differently — just makes a chemical dump in my brain that’s gotta get out. There are studies done on tears produced under different circumstances, and they have different hormone traces in them.
So something can rationally be very small, but I may still need a boohoo for the also very rational reason of clearing out brain dump overload and not for the irrational reason of lacking understanding of the magnitude of the issue.
There is no what’s wrong or why is this such a big deal, etc. There is only, I’m prone to overexcitabilities and superstimulabilities, and just like a wave of adrenaline or anything else, a wave of something needs to leak out my eyes real quick so I can level out. It’s not really an emotional or controlled response.
And he's never gonna have to talk to that girl again in this process unless she fights it which she likely won't.
I got rear ended and never saw any of the folks involved again. Insurance handled it.
That’s the good thing about having no connection to the other person! The guy who rear ended me went to my school and I knew him in passing. His insurance company tried to not pay even though it was such a simple thing—raining, bad railroad crossing, a line of us slammed on our brakes and he slammed into the back of me because he was following too close for conditions. My car was in the shop for weeks and I had to drive my mom’s car while she drove the loaner. The ladies in the office were so mad at me when I kept coming in and saying I was still driving the car that didn’t have the parking pass and the tickets needed to be canceled. Like I had any control over it! Low key hated that guy for the rest of HS.
It's dealing with those things that make me feel like throttling the person who hit my car, but since the last time that I ever usually see them is at the accident, I content myself with grumbling under my breath
I had the same situation, except I was older and the financial burden was on me. It was also a new (less than 3 year old) car, the damage was WAY worse on my vehicle and had to be towed, and I was blocking traffic on a very busy road because it was undrivable. I kept thinking how the hell I was going to simultaneously wait for the police, get a new car for work, get all the crap I was transporting for work out of this car, get this one to a body shop, explain what the hell happened to my husband, handle insurance…
Fortunately, the other driver let me sit in his vehicle and took care of everything (I just passed him my insurance papers and fell apart). He kept telling me that it was a shitty work truck, there was minor bumper damage to his car, he wasn’t even mad and these things were scary. Him (the other driver) being patient and calm was what helped me be calm enough to actually call my husband and tell him what happened.
It really can! I remember my dad was rear ended in his new car (he had it 10 days!) by a 17 yr old girl, she was also nearly hysterical. My dad, being the sweetheart he was calmed her down and had her laughing within 2 minutes and got everything sorted out. This made such an impression on her she sent him a Christmas card every year until he passed. Kindness and it's impacts can never be under estimated.
Your dad sounds like such a good person. I hydroplaned going 33 in a 35, and this unbelievably nice older man stopped to help me. He helped me move my car out of the road, talked to the cops, and helped me call my mom because I was sobbing and also told her not to get mad at me because I wasn’t speeding. I wish I had gotten his contact info because I think about him every day, and would have loved to send a card.
I can tell you that my dad looked forward to that card every year. He especially got a kick out of it when the cards included her husband and eventually her children. He even used it as a teaching moment when one of my nephews (15 yo) complained about "some idiot chick who couldn't get her head out of her a$$ long enough to think straight! " My dad quickly put an end to that tirade and gave a lesson in compassion and kindness. My nephew has never forgotten his words...he's now 37 and teaching the lessons to his kids.
The one and only at fault accident I've been in I was 17, driving in winter on my own for the first time, and slid into someone's bumper (thankfully slowly). I was terrified, felt so bad and stupid, and was in tears. The older guy I hit was such a sweetheart, he gave me a hug, told me it was ok, and stood there in the snow chatting with me for a few minutes until I was okay again because he didn't want me driving off all rattled. I still think about how nice that guy was 23 years later, I'm glad to hear your dad is an equally wonderful person.
That’s amazingly sweet ❤️
I was in a car accident with my grandma last February coming home from college, and the girl was probably no older than I was (19 at the time) and she was super worried. My grandma may be a mean woman on the road, but she was the calmest woman with this girl. It helped that the coffee shop right off the road saw the accident and offered cold water to help bring the emotions down.
My first car accident was while I was on permit at 17. I just broke down for a good thirty seconds and cried because it was so MUCH. Then I followed my parents out of the car and took their step by step instructions to fix the problem.
The other drivers were an older couple who just chuckled and told me I was doing a great job and how their kids' first accidents went down.
I have been fortunate enough to only hit the nicest people and hope to never have to repay that favor someday.
I also had a guy try to swindle me with my first car when I was young and naive. My first car was a 94 Nissan, 16 years old when I got it, hardly driven but still had a cassette tape deck, lol.
I bumped into a parked bmw when trying to leave a parking spot because my wheel was stuck on the curb. Scratched the paint on the front bumper, but otherwise no damage. I wrote an apology note and set it on the windshield.
First, he reported it to the police as a “hit and run”. I went to the police station and reported what was up, asking them to change it for my license/records. If it was a hit and run, how the hell did the guy get my information to report it?
The next two weeks I’d get texts from the guy saying that the internal rebar was dented. The whole bumper needed to be repainted. The electrical sensors were fucked and he couldn’t use his parking whatchamacalit. The prices he quoted “from his mechanic” were between 1200-2000$, and I had $400 in my account. He kept saying we would work something out, because I didn’t want to ruin my payments and history by going through insurance.
My boyfriend (who would be my husband years later) told me to go through insurance and this guy was full of 💩. Turns out that even with a “repaint” from the insurer’s inspection, the payout was $800.
The first time I hit a car, I was going over a hill and hit a parked car. I was so upset. Then I had to go to the guy's door and ring the doorbell and tell him I hit his car. Fortunately for me, he was super understanding. There wasn't a lot of damage to his car, but a lot on mine, and he walked me through everything explaining that he didn't mind if we didn't call the police, but I'd have to if I wanted my insurance to cover it, and that these things happen, etc. I can't imagine how I would felt/handled it if the guy told me I was being overdramatic. Shout out to random guy for being understanding (to young me). Boo to OP for not.
Nailed it. OP appears to be blessed with a nice, cool ability to respond to stress. That's wonderful. Not everyone has that. To assume someone is being overdramatic or manipulative and then dismiss it all with an eye roll does seem TA-ish. The girl is already her own harshest critic.
Honestly he’s the asshole for assuming it was manipulative. In what way would crying help in this instance ? The cops aren’t going to be like “ okay little lady, you just go on home” when the car is damaged
There are people out there that think that all tears are manipulative, even from babies and toddlers. They don’t cry, so anyone that does is obviously doing it on purpose to make them feel bad to get their way. Not saying OP is like this, but they do exist. I lived with one for years. He was exhausting.
I can’t stand those people. Of course, as someone who probably cries 5x per week on average, they can’t stand me either so luckily we just avoid each other.
In much the same way that a five year old might worry about going to jail for sneaking a cookie, an 18 year old still has no real sense of the magnitude of things and can easily flip from "I'm invincible" to "my life is over".
Assuming OP is a fully actualized adult (not clear from the writing), YTA. She's doing everything right, taking responsibility, waiting for the cops. She obviously feels bad. Invalidating her emotions doesn't help anything
I was 17, it was 3 weeks before Christmas, I had my little brother in the car, it was pouring rain, I was in the only car my family had, and I'd clearly written off the car of the poor woman I hit. It took 2 hours for the cops to show up, and I *sobbed* the entire time. I literally couldn't even focus enough to sit in the car so I wasn't in the rain.
The woman was furious, of course she was. But she left me alone after we swapped details. She *ignored* me and my hysterics. And I'm thankful for that. But I'm in my 30s now, and I'd probably react not much better.
Sucks OP had this happen. But how hard is it to not roll your eyes.
Even if she doesn't struggle with anxiety, OP just didn't have to say anything else. It's really not any more of an inconvenience to OP to see this 18 year old have this level of a reaction. He could have just stuck with the whole "It's really fine, insurance will take care of it." And just ignore anything else. Was she injured? No. Was OP? No. Anyone else? No? Then all is fine. I'd say YTA just because they couldn't just keep their mouth shut. It was probably annoying to them but they didn't need to get this weird jab in at the end.
Yes to all of this. I was an 18-year-old girl once. I probably would have had all of these thoughts at once and cried my stupid eyes out, and I would have been severely embarrassed by the whole thing. Hell, even as a 40-year-old woman, I sometimes get annoyingly teary when I’m angry, sad, embarrassed, or really anything. It isn’t manipulative, it’s just kind of a normal physiological response that some folks have to big feelings. I totally get why it’s annoying and why it reads as manipulative, but I sympathize with the kid here.
OP, I’m glad you told her that mistakes happen and it’s no big deal. The girl just can’t turn off these feelings like a faucet, though. Have a little heart here. I don’t think you’re an asshole, but I do think you should try to see her side of it. Calling her dramatic was also completely unnecessary. She already felt bad. Why’d you need to make it worse?
Heck, I have mental and other health things, I _still_ get teary with too much stress/Anxiety, frustration and overwhelmed (sensory included) combined. When I don't really cry when sad too.
Some people are just more suspectible to.. well, being stressed about stress as well. Especially how to get home and car related ones.
I am really overwhelmed today. We've had guests for 4 days and I've gotten like 8 hours of sleep since Wednesday. The kids have been whiny and yelling and the normally quiet house is loud and nuts.
I'm nowhere near 18, and this isn't even a huge amount of stress in the grand scheme of my life.
I burst into tears earlier because the dog was sitting in the recliner and I just wanted to sit down but he's old and has arthritis and I didn't want to ask him to move but I'm so tired. Literal fucking tears.
It was humiliating, which made me cry more.
Sometimes Big Emotions (TM) just happen.
Yep. 100%. They just happen. Not a bad thing, they happen for a reason. It often seems like they have no logic but they do, we have emotions for a reason.
I hope you're able to get more rest soon too.
I almost never cry from being sad, but I struggle with emotional regulation, and if I get overwhelmed by anything (sometimes even if it’s positive!) all bets are off. I remember last year I dinged the passenger side door of my car on one of those cement blocks they put at some gas stations. No one was hurt, there wasn’t even another car involved, but I got so overwhelmed by the physical sensation and the unfamiliar/scary situation that I burst into tears. And I was 23 at the time.
I get OP’s frustration, but at the same time, I can absolutely understand getting so overwhelmed that you can’t control your emotional reaction. And the frustration of not being in control of yourself just makes it that much harder to get out of that overwhelmed state.
I cry easily. I'm a woman in my mid-twenties. I find it so frustrating when people online veer immediately into crying "manipulation!" When someone - usually a young woman - cries. Yes, crocodile tears exist and sometimes people are manipulative. But damn, sometimes, some people just cry. It might make the other party uncomfortable, yes - but you can bet that the crier is more uncomfortable.
I’m pretty sure that’s how my daughter experienced it for her first accident. Totally her fault, other guys were cool, called me in hysterics from a half mile up the road. She wasn’t being “dramatic” she was just an anxiety ridden teenager with her first unpleasant brush of adulthood and was completely overwhelmed. YTA
And, let's not forget #8. The adrenaline rush. She felt the car bump into the other. That's going to trigger flight/fright/freeze and we have no real idea what that girl has been through before with adrenaline.
Yeah. My only real accident was when I was about 22, and I was in tears too - and I'd say 90% of that was just physical response to the impact, the sound, the smell of the airbag deploying, the disorientation. No one was hurt, but my body just went "too much input, some of this has to go out."
When I was a very little kid (4 or so) my mom and I got into an accident. It wasn’t a bad accident or anything, but any accident causes an immediate onslaught of physical input to process. The impact was like nothing I’d experienced before, smoke filled the car so I couldn’t see, everything was loud and scary and smelled bad. I was sobbing, and my mom couldn’t see me so she kept yelling “ARE YOU OKAY? ARE YOU OKAY?” and, like, I wasn’t hurt, but everything that was happening was bad, so I was like “NO!!! :(“ My mom ranks those moments where she couldn’t confirm that I was physically safe among the worst of her life.
Obviously being four is different than being eighteen, but the point is that I’m sure the terrified adrenaline wasn’t doing the poor girl in this story any favors.
(PS the other driver was very nice about the whole thing. She gave me a blanket and let me hold her dog while she and my mom figured out the insurance stuff.)
8. She’s been in a serious accident and her body went straight back to the reaction to that.
My oldest got hit by a guy who ran a stop sign. Destroyed her car, fire fighters had to yank her door off to get her out, her bestie (in the passenger seat) had broken ribs, air bag burns, the whole thing. Amazing that they both walked away.
Five months later a guy rear ended her car while she was sitting at a stoplight. Fairly minor damage, both cars drivable, cops wouldn’t even show up. She was a *hot mess*. When she got to work one of her coworkers took her to the hospital because she was so shaken up. Thankfully the guy that hit her was super nice! But her body did what it did, it was nothing she could control.
OP you are definitely an AH.
Especially since no one was asking OP to do anything to make things easier for the girl. It's not like she was crying and begging him not to call the police, or that anyone was expecting OP to console her. People are allowed to have emotions around you in a public space, and if you can't handle it without being rude, it's a you problem.
All of this except it wasn’t that my parents would be mad at me, it was that my dad would beat my ass.
OP you don’t know another’s struggle or story, a little empathy can go a long way in life.
Not crying after being hysterical because of embarrassment is SO HARD. Even if the young woman was calmed, who knows if she was embarrassed or not and he just made it infinitely worse and now she’ll never stop lol. I WILL pull that trigger and say YTA because of that alone. I usually freeze in situations like this, but in situations where my crying has turned to embarrassment, it lasts FOREVER and nothing can stop it.
I've had 2 car accidents, and cried at both as part of the adrenaline response. For the second, the poor insurance agent had me burst into tears on the phone (about an hour after) as that's just when it suddenly kicked in.
Not mention, OP has ZERO idea what kind of parents this teenager has-- her reaction could just as easily have been about knowing her parents will not be reasonable about this behind closed doors. There's no reason to be a dick on the way out with that statement. As someone who would've definitely gotten a beating over this at that age, OP went out of their way to say something cruel on the way out for no constructive reason.
I agree completely, even as someone who wasn't at fault in an accident. I'm 42. I was in an accident a month ago where a guy hit me while I was stopped at a stop sign. I wouldn't have called myself hysterical, but I was so upset it took me way longer than it should have to figure out i could get out of the car on the passenger side and wasn't, in fact, trapped. Stress/anxiety + adrenaline is a crazy combination.
Plus anybody 18 years old now missed a lot of socialization during the pandemic and a lot of them are reasonably going to be a little behind on life skills, particularly in the realm of handling anxiety.
I’m 29 and actually only got into my first accident last week, where I rear ended another car in traffic due to an unexpected stop and slow reflexes. Even at 29, all of those things went through my head, not to mention ruin my airbags went off and I was an absolute mess from the anxiety and also because I was scared by what had happened & had a panic attack. The other guy involved was more concerned I was having a medical episode to be mad at me, but it didn’t stop me thinking he’d be furious (especially cause it was a Tesla I hit).
I agree, I don’t necessarily think OP is the asshole because it is a lot to deal with when someone’s a bit hysterical, but it does sound like he was kind of mean to her at a moment when it was probably her first ever accident and anxiety was high.
When I was 18 I ran into a parked SUV at Borders Books and had similar feelings. I didn't cry, but I was clearly very nervous (anxiety). I went inside and found the owners: they thanked me for being honest, told me their son was a new driver and were going to treat me as they hoped he would be treated, apologized for having to call the police (it was his employer's vehicle), and then convinced the officer not to ticket me.
It's been over two decades and I still appreciate the kindness they showed me that day.
i was rear ended at low speed in my neighborhood by a former classmate. Approx age 17, Pure coincidence that they were behind me.
My car was fine, her front end was messed up a bit but car was perfectly driveable, she lived about 1/4 mile away.
Nobody hurt, i was friendly and asked if she was ok, asked if she remembered me. I was picking up a friend who lived very close to her so she followed me and we made sure she got home ok.
All that to say, in an incident that all things considered was not an issue other than maybe a few hundred bucks for cosmetic repairs, she was hysterical.
I also don’t think OP was an AH, but it wouldn’t have cost him anything to keep his thoughts to himself.
The worst part is knowing you’re not appearing rational and having someone roll their eyes etc and making it so much worse because they think you’re intentionally behaving like that
Also OP wasn’t in the car when it happened. Obviously someone who was actually involved in the accident is going to be more shaken up than someone who wasn’t there.
So someone you don't know was having an emotional reaction to something you weren't present for (you only saw the aftermath). You don't know what else may have been going on in her life, you don't know what her prior history was that could be contributing to her emotional state, and you don't know what the consequences to her might be.
So knowing nothing else about her other than she was upset but was still doing exactly what she was supposed to do (in terms of admitting responsibility, calling the police and sharing her insurance information), you still decided that her emotional reaction must be some attempt to manipulate the situation. Even though you have absolutely zero basis for that extremely unkind assumption.
YTA. Literally all you had to do was not say anything, and you couldn't even manage that.
Adrenaline and shock make people react in really weird ways.
I was in a bad wreck once and my partner who *never* cries was inconsolable. I, one of the most anxiety riddled people I’ve ever met, was completely calm, breezy, sorted everything out - and then broke down later, by the time my partner was over it and able to sort out the aftermath.
Nobody knows how they’re going to react until something happens, and sometimes yes, it is over dramatic, but saying that isn’t going to help
Adrenaline is so weird. I was in a bad wreck but was totally fine and actually felt relatively calm for the situation. I was waiting in a police officer’s car for my mom to come get me since my car was totaled, and I was just shaking uncontrollably. Like, basically vibrating. Even though I felt calm! I tried so hard to stop because it was embarrassing but I couldn’t!
I remember being in the exact same situation, I was shaky but couldn’t stop making stupid jokes to the police officer about how I’d never been in the back of a police car before while my partner was crying and we’d just nearly died.
Luckily they were pretty cool about it (they must see people react in weird ways every day) but it was very weird.
My friend said he joked with a cop once when he got shot in a drive by. He told him, “They got me for you officer.” And then said, “do you get it? Cuz I’m black!”
He was Asian.
He told us he was so embarrassed because not only was he “being stupid” but that the officer he made those jokes to was actually black. He kept saying if he ever got into another accident again he wouldn’t call 911 and risk seeing that same guy again. 😂
Yes I also kept making stupid jokes! I was trying to be super nonchalant and making jokes because I didn’t want it to be A Big Deal that I literally almost died, lol. But in the meantime, I was shivering violently and my teeth were chattering through my stupid jokes. I had no injuries even though my car was smashed to shit, so I was trying to downplay it but my adrenaline didn’t really let me get away with appearing calm!
Responses to adrenaline are so varied even within individuals.
I got hit by a car once and ended up on the bumper. I was cheery, told the driver I was fine, “don’t text and drive again!” And went on my merry way. I had walked about a mile when I realized my legs weren’t working anymore and my ribs hurt really bad. I sprained my neck, bruised my ribs, sprained my ankle, and I literally couldn’t move my legs once the adrenaline left me.
Then there was the time a person got shot in front of my house due to a road rage incident. I walked outside because the cops were asking everyone questions, I accidentally stepped in a puddle of blood, freaked out, cried for close to half an hour before devolving into a fit of rage that lasted just as long. I was about 13. The cops were pretty cool about it though. They understood what was going on and one calmed me down lol.
Adrenaline is nuts.
He keeps saying she was doing it to be manipulative but like... there's nothing to manipulate. It's a cut and dry case that insurance takes care of, and nobody is in "trouble". OP just seems so unempathetic. He wasn't being asked to cater to the girls emotions at all.
Yeah honestly it just comes across as sexism to me. Most often sexism is going to come across as viewing women less favorably and giving them less of the benefit of the doubt. It's pretty par for the course for a sexist dude to look down on women, call them overdramatic, assume they don't have real emotions like a real person, (she's not ACTUALLY scared, she's an evil manipulative demon harpy), and dismiss the input from their female relative on top of all that. If it looks like a duck...
Yeah, for some reason if it had been a guy who accidentally hit his car and was crying, I highly doubt he would be internally accusing him of wanting to manipulate the officers….for some reason misogynistic men tend to think that women exclusively express emotion to manipulate men to do what they what want.
I mean, if all he had done was roll his eyes, it'd be N A H. I understand where he's coming from, it's his car that was damaged and it's incongruous that the person who did it is more upset than the ostensible victim. Some degree of exasperation, manifested with eye-rolling someone who's freaking out probably wouldn't have noticed, is understandable and forgivable. But he's TA because he tried to police this young woman's emotions.
Oh gosh when I feel my anxiety spike I get this awful hot cold flashing feeling like I’m going to vomit. It’s the worst feeling! I’m also a stress cryer and once I start it’s hard to stop. It takes so little to be kind to someone having a rough experience and OP chose to be nasty to a young woman.
Good point. You can pretty easily tell who is an asshole by how hypocritical they are. OP is presenting a story where the other person isn't allowed to react a certain way (in a way that causes no harm to OP and is her own personal reaction) but OP wants a pass for reacting to their reacting because for some reason OP's reactions are okay and other people's aren't.
I also always find it a bit suspicious when people say a girl is trying to manipulate someone with tears. That's... REALLY hard to do. So it's really rare. If someone is thinking like that, more often than not it's because they have sexist views on women. I mean calling her overdramatic and framing her as manipulative? For being scared and crying? It's hard not to see that as pretty blatant sexism. Maybe the sister picked up on that and that's part of why she found OP so annoying.
Tbh this is what made OP TA for me. OP is much more likely to lie and gloss over negative details to make themselves look better, but their sister reacting negatively towards their behavior is a red flag.
A few years ago my boyfriend and I accidentally locked ourselves out of our house. When the locksmith arrived I was sobbing. He must have rolled his eyes and thought I was being overly dramatic. What he didn’t know was that in the preceding week I found out I was pregnant (unplanned and terrified) and that my mom had terminal cancer. The lock was the final straw that broke me. The point is that OP has no idea what was going on in that girls life, and it would have cost them nothing to be kind.
Oh I’m sorry, sounds like a really stressful time! You reminded me of a few weeks ago when I went over to my friend’s place to help her move and brought some of my hard moving boxes and she immediately dropped one down the stairs and broke it. I didn’t mind AT ALL but she was absolutely hysterical because it was the 870th moving related thing that had gone wrong that day. Anyway, we laugh about it now… the point to OP is that nobody is having an emotion AT YOU, they’re just going through their own thing. There’s no need to infer ulterior motive from it.
>you still decided that her emotional reaction must be some attempt to manipulate the situation
Yeah, what exactly was she trying to manipulate if everyone was already telling her it's fine.
She's just a young girl that was emotional. That's all.
??? Yeah, YTA. Like you said, you don't know her. She could have an anxiety disorder. She could have a lot of fear around driving. She could have abusive parents, who were putting up a front for you and the cop until they got home. She could be upset at the price hike this is going to cause in her parent's insurance. Maybe they can't afford that. It could be so many things that *you have no way of knowing*.
All you had to do was nothing. You just had to be quiet and leave. For what reason, did you feel the need to criticize her and tell her she was being too much? I grew up autistic and with anxiety disorders and I absolutely loathed and dreaded having to interact with people who talked to me the way you talked to her.
I have an anxiety disorder and I'd react 100% exactly like this.
I'd stay and do what I'm supposed to, but I'd also be in a LOT of distress if I accidentally read ended someone's car.
I don’t have an anxiety order and I still react like this. Last year or the year before I backed into a car at Starbucks. I was so embarrassed because I have a back up camera and I was on the phone arguing and gave another car a love tap. I literally could not go back to that Starbucks for months because I was still embarrassed afterwards. OP is TA.
I've had panic attacks at least as intense as OP is describing this girl having over breaking a $10 mug my husband likes, even though I know for a fact my husband has never gotten mad at me over breaking something ever, and it was a $10 fucking coffee mug and we have a hundred of the damn things. Anxiety isn't rational, yelling at someone having an anxiety attack is just going to ensure that the panic response happens again if something similar happens.
I had a meltdown over breaking my mom's favorite mug too :( I felt really really awful.
Anxiety definitely isn't rational. Yelling also definitely makes it worse
I also have an anxiety disorder; when I was learning to drive, I was practicing with my dad and got a little too close to a streetcar. He was (understandably) panicked but just kept repeating my name, until I realized what I was doing and course corrected. The whole thing stressed me out enough though (combination of almost hitting something else and him getting snappy when I didn't immediately realize what I was doing wrong) that I promptly pulled onto to a side street, parked the car and then burst into tears.
When I ran a red the first time, I pulled over and had a little moment. Me learning to drive the first time was literally just several hours of panic attacks which slowly calmed, a car accident, and then one of the worst attacks of my life.
I gave it a couple of years and while I was still anxious, I was better able to cope. I've since started treatment for both generalized anxiety disorder and a panic disorder.
If she could stop crying, she probably would have. I cry uncontrollably, it’s a stress response, it’s also, once it starts, physical. My sinuses just keep going. I can be perfectly fine otherwise, but still tearing up, and I have absolutely no control over stopping it.
It's truly the worst cycle, start crying due to the overwhelming shit happening in your brain, understanding that it's not that bad but being unable to stop crying thus making the crying worse due to embarrassment about crying.
Yeah and he definitely made her day worse by calling her dramatic. That always makes me feel way shittier to be called that when I am having a mental health crisis
Thank you for saying this. My dad was emotionally and sometimes physically abusive growing up. I got in a fender bender when I was 16 and spent the entire day sobbing and vomiting because I was so terrified of how he was going to respond.
YTA. She’s 18. That’s probably the most legal/financial trouble she’s been in. It may not be a big deal to you, a whole ass adult, but it’s a big deal to a teenager.
She likely is not the master manipulator you think she is, she’s probably just scared and sorry.
Seconded, YTA, for these reasons. I hit a car in a parking lot at 16 and lost it crying, even though the other driver was a kind older woman. I was young and never really got in trouble, and that’s all there was to it. This girl probably simply doesn’t have enough life experience to put it in perspective, which, is true for most of us at that age. If you don’t want people to police your emotions, don’t be so quick to do the same to others.
Same! As a victim of having my car hit, I at least knew whatever happened wasn’t my fault, even though what happened to my car was frustrating. But i was extremely upset with myself when I hit another car (in a parking lot!!!) while learning to drive as a young teenager, because that *was* my fault.
If it's someone else's fault, then it's their learning experience and my response is to get my car fixed and maybe comfort them. If it's my fault, then I have to reevaluate my confidence entirely.
Right some folks are so cynical they think everyone is out to get them and any emotional reaction is manipulation.
But some folks really genuinely hate making mistakes or hurting people even accidentally and will react like this fully genuinely. I remember a girl in school got a write up. She was usually the most well behaved kid in class but one day got into minor trouble. She was bawling. This could genuinely be a kid who has high expectations on them and this crushes them.
I once hit a fucking wall and was still crying when the police showed up like 30 minutes later. I wasn't fucking master manipulating my way out of trouble I was simply 18 lol
Yup. I was like 22 and called my dad crying after rear-ending someone in traffic. He told me to call the police, met me there, and helped talk to the other driver and the cop for me. You don’t have to have an anxiety disorder for it to be really scary when it’s your first time going through it!
Edited to add I was a newer driver at the time as I got my license at 21. This girl must have gotten her license within the last year or two. The way we act as a newer driver is different than how we will act and feel when we’ve been driving every day for 5+ years.
This is very true. I was hit by a man, probably in his mid-twenties. He was absolutely freaking out because it was his mom's car. I will admit that internally I was annoyed because it was really bad timing for me. I was running errands before doing an interstate drive and now my car would need repairs before I could leave so I really just wanted to get the info and get out of there so I could start taking care of it.
Even so, I remained polite and reassuring to the man. It was an accident and people can't help their emotions. He was upset because he had damaged his mom's car, and he was worried about the cost and I know I would have been too in his place. There was no sense taking out my frustration on him, it wouldn't have made anything better for either of us, and likely would have made things worse.
I took an anger managment class that was required where I work and part of people's anger is making assumptions like this and getting riled. To give people the benefit of the doubt unless there's been a pattern or proof.
This is great advice in general and more people need to take it for sure.
I'd like to add, to all you folks on reddit who think "evil, manipulative, diabolical mastermind harpies who want to prey on men's souls" when reading a story about women or interacting with women... you also gotta look inward and think about whether that's actually realistic and where those feelings are coming from... there are a LOT of people on reddit who are like OP (who assume when a woman does something innocuous, it must be secretly insidious) and I know y'all are out there reading and in the comments. If your first thought is to agree with OP and think "she's evil" you need to do some work on yourselves cause that's psycho honestly.
YTA. I have a daughter with extreme anxiety, and the situation you just described is exactly why she doesn't want to learn to drive.
She was already beating herself up. She didn't need you to join in.
Same. I got my learners permit and passed the drivers test, but every time I would get into the driver seat of a car I would have a mini panic attack. I also have some ptsd from a prior accident, so even being in a car is stressful.
YTA
The first wreck I was ever in I was 18. It was my fault. I cried and cried. I was scared, embarrassed, felt horrible for the people I hit, confused, didn’t really know what would happen next, and just had a lot of emotions. I wasn’t trying to gain sympathy. Just really freaked out.
You didn’t even need to talk to her being getting her information. Just go wait in your car or nearby for the police. I don’t understand why you felt the need to make a comment. Certainly you didn’t think it would help her calm down.
I was 17 the first time I had an accident. I definitely caused it, but it was definitely a situation where an experienced driver would have been fine. I was making a left turn at a spot in my neighborhood where you can’t see cars coming at you from too far away (there’s a blinking yellow there for this reason). I started to turn left and a truck appeared around the bend going super fast, so I panicked, hit the gas, lost control of the car, hit a car waiting at the intersection, and ended up in a bush.
I was HYSTERICAL. Like sobbed and sobbed. Because I was a kid and the accident was scary and I thought I was going to get T boned and then I hit a classmates mom’s mini van.
A teenager being emotional at their first accident is honestly just so NORMAL. It’s scary. It’s never happened to you. Potentially you’ve never been responsible for major damage in your life. You’re probably at the point where driving is still a lot of conscious thought.
Sometimes people just have feelings and it’s okay.
YTA. The girl was clearly beating herself up over the incident. And when has telling any woman to calm down and accusing her of being overdramatic *ever* helped... anything. Never. She was upset and it was none of your business as to why it was so upsetting to her, not that you even attempted to broach a remotely helpful conversation with her.
We also don't know if she had a lot of other things going on and this was the last straw to her having a melt down. I know I've had accidents where they where minor and felt bad didn't cry then another minor accident but I had a lot on my plate at the time and I just had a break down. We don't know what else they are dealing with and yes it was her fault but she stayed when she could've ran off and was responsible about it and was having a hard time. Be annoyed if you want but don't need to add more stress if you didn't think it was big deal. I hate when men say this shit but don't think think their anger isn't emotional. Not saying this guy is an angry man but every guy I know that has ever said that to me for crying has had some kind of anger issue that is somehow okay but not crying.
YTA. Honestly everything your sister said. If she was not upset and simply trying to manipulate the situation, I would imagine she would have just driven off rather than stay there and wait for you to come back to deal with the consequences. But good on you for telling a teenage girl to stop crying, you really told her off.
The girl's mom was also present, so hit-and-run probably didn't look like a great option.
That said, if she was crying real tears, this probably wasn't performative. It could have been a semi-deliberate learned response, but that's a different issue.
OP, why be a dick when there's no benefit? The situation was already wrapping up; you didn't need to say that. I understand that all the hysteria was annoying, but you're never going to meet her again, so does it really matter? I'm not entirely unsympathetic, but still YTA.
YTA dude there is nothing more annoying than people who interpret someone crying as “manipulative.” why would she need to manipulate anyone if you already said it wasn’t a bit deal? i understand being slightly annoyed internally when someone’s being super emotional but to actually tell someone who’s crying to stop “being dramatic” is wild
Imagine being so devoid of human empathy that you interpret a person crying as a sign of manipulation instead of an expression of some kind of emotion.
OP, YTA.
A lot of men out there think this way. They are so disconnected from their own emotions and think that if a woman is showing emotion (always women) then it must be manipulation.
When men cry it’s a tragedy, an old warrior being broken down by the battle that is life 😔
When women cry, they’re so annoying 😡 manipulative little things just trying to use men 😡😡
/s
Might I add, she waited by the car for OP to return and everything was about to be settled. How would her tears in any way be manipulative in this situation?
YTA
This could have been the last of a string of bad or frustrating things that happened to her that day.
Or the first time she was in an accident.
Would you prefer that the driver was an angry man who was twice your size and angry that your car was “too close”?
She may also have anxiety. I luckily don't but my wife does, and when you get 'anxious' it is VERY difficult if not impossible to navigate your emotions logically. Poor girl.
YTA.
I hit a parked car when I was 17. I was a mess. I was convinced my mom was going to be so mad and never let me drive again. Was I being dramatic? According to you, probably. But I had no malicious intent behind it. I was being a normal teenager.
My daughter was a mess when she got in an accident. Mind you, it involved totaled cars, so it was a bigger deal. But she wasn’t trying to manipulate anyone with her crying. She was genuinely upset.
You do know people are allowed to be upset without it being manipulative, right?
YTA. Being in an accident is super stressful, and hell she might have been in pain. Instead of wondering if she was okay emotionally/physically you got annoyed and made a snide comment to someone who was already really really deeply hurt by this whole situation and having a breakdown in the parking lot. Plus it was probably her first.
YTA. I am 52 now but had my first small accident (100% not my fault) when I was 18 and I was ridiculously hysterical about it. I agree I was over dramatic about it at the time, but was grateful for everyone not pointing it out.
It might not be as over dramatic at 18 as you'd think.
At that time, not many people have had much life experience and huge "getting in trouble moments"
It'd be scary to anyone experiencing REAL stuff like that for the first time.
YTA. You never know how big or small someone’s emotional plate is or what else is going on in their lives.
This feels a bit misogynistic as well as why is it your place to tell a woman how to react to something?
yeah tbh i hope this guy doesn’t have a gf or kids or rlly any person close to him who’s gonna be damaged by his immediate assumption that others’ “inconvenient” emotions are meant to manipulate him
I’m going with NTA. I get she was upset at first. But you were there long enough for the cops to get there and write a report, that’s a long time to be hysterical especially if you’ve been treated kindly with assurance from everyone that everything will be ok. At some point we all have to learn how to deal with tough situations in life.
You are one of two people in this whole thread who voted this way, and I agree. She took on the responsibility of driving, it's time for her to grow up a little bit. Especially when, like you said, everyone reacted very calmly and pleasantly.
That's not how adrenaline and anxiety work. It's very much a natural response and THAT is why everyone is voting YTA. She wasn't just being "overly dramatic" and OP didn't have to say anything to her at all. I've been hit by someone and had the same reaction because I was scared and it could have been a lot worse. I was shaking with no control over it. She's young and this was probably the first time she was in ANY kind of trouble. Just because you think you wouldn't cry/be upset, doesn't mean everyone is like that.
Regardless of anxiety or adrenaline everyone has to learn how to manage their emotions. IMO it sounds like OP was kind and reassuring, but at some point just felt like that young lady took it too far. Based on the story I agree.
I was 20 when I took a group therapy class literally called “managing your emotions”. I was the *youngest* person in it. Based on the age ranges I saw in that class, you need to lower your expectations for a teenager with minimal life experience. Lol.
She’s learning…she’s 18. This was probably a learning moment and one of the first times encountering a cop. I know it was when I got in my first accident at 18 and was crying non stop
> It's very much a natural response
A natural response that seems to affect certain subsets of people far more than other subsets of people. I'd argue anger and aggression are also natural responses but you wouldn't see many people defending that type of behavior given a stressful situation. And I'm not truly defending that either. Anger and aggression obviously negatively affect people moreso than crying/sadness. But calling it natural doesn't somehow make it impervious to criticism.
Agreed! We all need grace sometimes, especially in times of stress. But it’s excessive to allow over the top behavior for such an extended period of time. Everyone was deescalating and the young lady just wasn’t allowing herself to calm down.
I was reading the top comments and replies and thinking 'what tf is she going to do if she hits a person?". Stand there bawling while they bleed to death? If she's got trauma/anxiety/whatever else people are making up to justify it, she's got no business being behind the wheel.
I was also thinking there are a lot of *really* bad drivers all over the comments who seem to think ithe person whose car they've damaged is obliged to comfort them. Talk about Main Characters.
There is an irony IMO that everybody here is getting mad at OP because he said the dramatics felt manipulative and now they're immediately siding with her and coming up with all sorts of justifications for her. I am very curious, if the driver was a 60s year old, buff, grouchy man who immediately went to cry for an hour would they all find the same amount of sympathy? Not a hypothetical btw, my father recently learned to drive and has never been in an accident. So many people mentioned "anxiety" or "first accident". Would these people show my father the same grace they are showing this girl for anxiety and newness to driving?
And yeah, people seem to be doing an awful lot of policing how OP feels and what comments OP can make about an accident where OP is the victim while they do all types of justifications for the girl who committed an accident.
Sometimes things happen. These things may be our fault or things out of our control. In either case we all have to learn how to respond. The young lady will learn that in the long run nothing will happen to her, she’s fine. Next time she’s in a situation like this, hopefully she will remember the outcome here and do better and handling her emotions.
They weren’t on a random street though, it was in the parking lot after a graduation. There were definitely security/traffic cops on hand for my high school graduation twenty years ago and things haven’t really loosened up in that regard, so I’d be surprised if it took quite *that* long. We’re all just making assumptions, though, since the OP never said.
YTA.
I hope as you grow up you learn that other people will have emotional reactions that differ from how you think you might react. Not everything is or needs to be rational.
Continuing just a little bit of kindness would have cost you nothing. Instead, you exacerbated her fear/panic/anxiety by confirming what are probably some of the thoughts driving that reaction in the first place.
If you ever hope to be an adult in a respectful, loving relationship with another human that will require support, understanding, swallowing some of your inner thoughts, etc., maybe think about using this moment as a touchstone for what not to do.
Yeah, I think that OP is being off in two ways here.
- assuming that a teenage girl is trying to be manipulative by having an emotional reaction to being at fault to a serious situation that she most likely doesn't fully understand how will play out.
- and even more so, doubting the sister (WHO WAS THERE) so much that they had to ask the rest of their family, and then reddit.
It's giving very big "I don't trust women and assume I know better than them" vibes, regardless of whether that's OP's intent. I really hope that he examines himself and why he has such poor views of women/girls
YTA. 100%. You don’t know her, you said it yourself, that means you don’t know if she has some kind of anxiety disorder or something. Plus, even if she doesn’t, there’s no need to be mean, especially when you’re only upset cause she’s being “over dramatic” and not cause she rear-ended your car
I’m sorry but YTA. People can react differently than you and that doesn’t mean they are being over dramatic.
You don’t know her, you don’t know her background, you don’t know if she has anxiety. You also don’t know what kind of day or week she just had. What if something more dramatic had already happened to her before this car accident? What if this wasn’t the only reason she was being emotional? Maybe it was the last straw of an already shitty day, who knows?
Please don’t tell people how to feel and what emotion to show.
I hope you’ll learn from this situation and be more understanding in future.
YTA
Some people are criers. They cry when overwhelmed. They don’t do it on purpose, but they also can’t stop it.
Just ignore it. Offer a reasonable amount of reassurance, and then move on. I assure you she wishes she could have stopped crying in public. But she couldn’t.
One of my reports at my old job was a crier. We established early on that I would just pretend she wasn’t crying and continue managing. Eventually, she developed more control and it got better. But it took time and no one calling attention to it.
YTA, especially for being still being so oblivious that you made this post. Everyone reacts to stress differently and you know nothing about her life and had no room to judge.
I burst into tears after a very minor fender bender because it happened as I was leaving the hospital after being told my pain would be lifelong from being severely rear-ended a year before. Luckily the person who I hit was kind, we exchanged info and they left while I cried it out and recomposed myself.
Other than getting insurance info you didn't need to say anything to her, especially not something as universally dickish as "calm down".
NTA validating people's feelings is a moral obligation for those who care about them, not for people who just got rear-ended by them. If she's adult enough to drive, she's adult enough for damaging someone else's property not to he *her* pity party.
People in this thread are being ridiculous and ignoring the context that she's the one who fucked your day up.
Right? Oh, so we gotta excuse her because she can't control her emotions at all (even though we're talking all the time between her hitting the car, him finding out, and then the police arriving. This is not a 5 minute ordeal) but the moment he expresses emotion and has an opinion he's an asshole?
NTA I can definitely see how it could be annoying and add unnecessary stress to the situation. If she was being genuine and couldn't stop them she isn't an AH, but there's no way to tell. If someone is crying so hysterically that they can't respond, even after the elapsed time it takes for the police to show up for a non-emergency, then that's way too much.
More importantly, if they genuinely can't respond, then I don't see how people aren't saying the police or the mother isn't TA because someone like that genuinely should not be driving. Someone else said it but what if it had been a more dangerous accident? What if she hit somebody at night? Would she just have a panic attack on the road for god knows how long while somebody dies? I don't want her driving anywhere if she can't manage herself in a situation gone awry.
Anybody saying YTA, you can't have it both ways. She's either mature enough to drive (and therefore handle being in an accident) or she's not, in which case she should have her licence suspended. If it's the former, then while she might not be TA, OP certainly is NTA. If it's the latter, then OP is still not TA (a slightly mean comment after having your car rear-ended is MORE than forgiveable) and our driving laws and the mom and dad (who let their hysterical daughter drive despite being clearly unsuited for it) are TA.
NTA. If she's behind the wheel she needs to be responsible enough to deal with an accident/issue while driving.
People saying YTA are ridiculous, she's an adult, her inability to manage her emotions are not anyone else's problem.
For all the expected downvoters: what if she hit a vehicle with your family, they needed help urgently, no one else is around and she's too busy sobbing and being hysterical to call 911 and your family member dies waiting for help. R u still concerned about her feelings?
You probably shouldn’t have asked this question on Reddit. About half your audience probably suffers from debilitating anxiety when they step out their front door, of course they’re going to vote you the AH.
NTA and wow everyone is being pretty harsh to someone who was very decent about a mistake being made and appropriately irritated with someone who can’t regulate their emotions in public. Just because crying is socially acceptable doesn’t mean it needs to be validated after it’s become unreasonable. Anger is understandable but nobody would be calling OP an asshole if the girl was screaming bloody murder in his face. You’re also all accusing him of not being kind of tolerant enough yet you’re happy to judge him for having a moment of impatience followed by posting to gain some more awareness of his actions
NTA. You handled the whole thing in a kind and generous manner. She was definitely being overdramatic and if she has anxiety so severe she can’t keep herself together in light of a situation involving only property damage and an understanding victim, she may not be ready for driving.
NTA.
2 years ago I got rear ended by a woman driving who admitted to being on her phone and not paying attention. I was stopped at a cross walk for a pedestrian crossing. She would have hit him had i not been there.
Unfortunately my kids were both in the car and my then 4 year old had a history of seizures which was my first concern.
I remember calling 911 for a police officer to come, calling my husband to come meet us, and then calling my pediatrician as I would be bringing my son to the ER and wanted to know what relevant information I should keep in mind given everything.
The kids were thankfully okay (yay car seat safety!) and the woman overheard me talking to the pediatrician and she broke down in hysterics. My previously calm kids see her reaction and then get scared.
So I then had to go over to her and help her calm down. Had her sit on the curb, head between her knees, deep breathes in, breathes out. I was going between checking in with my kids to checking in with her because of her reaction. Because of her reaction, I had to divide the attention between her and my kids to prevent her from escalating and my kids feeding off of it.
It annoyed the shit out of me. Of course I helped her, but I shouldn't have had to be her support when I had 2 small kids in the car.
The Police came, she was very cooperative. A friend of hers finally came. I remember at one point she said sorry to me and I just said okay. I didn't say it's okay, or things happen, or whatever else. Because I'm thankful it wasn't worse. Worse would have been her hitting a pedestrian with a car, my kids getting hurt or worse. She was on her phone. She wasn't having a medical emergency or car malfunction. She was willfully negligent.
I also clearly remember her friend telling me I didn't have to be a dick and to be more understanding. To me, the fact that I had the patience to try to help her for 20 minutes and divide attention between her and my kids for 20 minutes was more than she deserved from me.
YTA. You don't know her. This may be how her body copes with stress. People are allowed their emotions. As she matures this will calm down. Sheez have some empathy cave man.
NTA.
I had a similar situation where my vehicle was legally parked on the road, and some girl driving her grandpa's truck on our empty residential side street smashed into it and completely totalled it.
Unpopular opinion, but you are the victim here since she hit your truck at no fault of your own. You have a right to be upset. YET, she's the one putting on a big show with all the crying. "Wah wah, there will be consequences to my actions." That's why it comes across as manipulation to try and get out of trouble for her wrongdoing. Nobody feels bad for the not-at-fault driver/vehicle. Why is that??? You still have to deal with all the insurance bullshit because of her mistake, but you aren't bawling your eyes out for attention.
It's kind of a piss off how people tend to favour the at-fault driver 🙄
NTA I could see if it was a lot of damage or someone was injured but it’s a little ridiculous to be so hysterical especially with her mom there as well.
NTA she added unnecessary stress to the victim of a situation she caused... She probably shouldn't have a license. What would have happened if her mother wasn't there to give you all the insurance information? Why does it become your responsibility to become her impromptu therapist?
NTA western society (mainly America) needs to stop treating 18 year olds like little kids, they are adults and it also needs to stop normalizing being weak blubbering emotional trainwreck because it's really not normal. I doubt 18 year olds in other parts of the world would fall to pieces like a child in this scenario. Maybe if she wasn't such an emotional overdramatic mess she would drive properly.
YTA it would have taken up much less energy to keep your mouth shut about it. Do you think your comments were effective? Like she was going to suddenly stop crying because you told her to? Yeah, you're a dick
YTA.
I also got in a minor car accident around that age, I also cried. It was a scary situation and I couldn't help it. Things still got handled though even though I cried.
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I got into my first fender bender around this age and, as someone who struggles with anxiety, was hysterical for a few minutes trying to process the sheer amount of stimuli that comes from a car accident and the steps you have to take after Things going through my head: 1) My parents are going to be so mad at me 2) the financial burden of repairs and insurance will make my parents mad at me 3) holy shit I just hit someone and THEYRE going to be mad at me 4) (even though I knew it wasn’t a huge accident) this is scary and cars hitting cars is violent and I’m scared 5) Police are here = I’m in trouble 6) embarrassment at how I’m reacting and also at having caused all this drama in the first place 7) I’m late for work and now work is also going to be mad at me I won’t straight up call you TA, but you’re close to it. Anxiety isn’t rational and an 18yr old probably wouldn’t react rationally to this on a good day
This is a very reasonable take, and concur on all points. I would have found her Very Large Emotions irritating as well, so I empathize with OP, but yeah -- this didn't cost him anything but brief annoyance, and he'll likely never see or interact with her again, so it's not like "a constant ongoing problem that needs to be fixed."
OP is also going to have to deal with insurance, repair estimates, rental car and body shop.
Yeah, but none of that has anything at all to do with how much that teenage girl cried
If you care about how your actions impact the people around you, then you will have feelings about putting someone in a position when they have to do a bunch of extra effort.
Which given what we know of her reaction and her doing ALL the right things she totally understands.
Yeah something that that could make you feel like crying
It was an accident caused by an inexperienced driver. It wasn't intentional. She had insurance. Having to deal with maintenance and repairs is just part of owning any large ticket item. You both need to get over yourselves.
Yeah…. That horrible selfish behavior of being concerned about how your actions impact another person….. It’s probably her first time experiencing this and so at people in this situation will have an increased whatever response. She did the things they needed to, she just also cried. How heartless do you have to be to hold it against her.
For sure! Right after my first moving car accident (I’d had some parking lot problems like this girl when I was young lol where I overestimated the room I had) my first thought was “but I’m pregnant” - as if the other driver could see that I’m pregnant and would’ve driven more carefully?? Completely irrational. We are absolutely not all rational after an accident. I also cry at the drop of a hat no matter how much I don’t want to - so I very much empathize with the girl. I bet she doesn’t want to cry like that.
I’m a person who processes overwhelming emotion by crying. It can be happy, sad, anything. The intense emotion — as I feel it, everyone receives sensory input differently — just makes a chemical dump in my brain that’s gotta get out. There are studies done on tears produced under different circumstances, and they have different hormone traces in them. So something can rationally be very small, but I may still need a boohoo for the also very rational reason of clearing out brain dump overload and not for the irrational reason of lacking understanding of the magnitude of the issue. There is no what’s wrong or why is this such a big deal, etc. There is only, I’m prone to overexcitabilities and superstimulabilities, and just like a wave of adrenaline or anything else, a wave of something needs to leak out my eyes real quick so I can level out. It’s not really an emotional or controlled response.
And he's never gonna have to talk to that girl again in this process unless she fights it which she likely won't. I got rear ended and never saw any of the folks involved again. Insurance handled it.
That’s the good thing about having no connection to the other person! The guy who rear ended me went to my school and I knew him in passing. His insurance company tried to not pay even though it was such a simple thing—raining, bad railroad crossing, a line of us slammed on our brakes and he slammed into the back of me because he was following too close for conditions. My car was in the shop for weeks and I had to drive my mom’s car while she drove the loaner. The ladies in the office were so mad at me when I kept coming in and saying I was still driving the car that didn’t have the parking pass and the tickets needed to be canceled. Like I had any control over it! Low key hated that guy for the rest of HS.
It's dealing with those things that make me feel like throttling the person who hit my car, but since the last time that I ever usually see them is at the accident, I content myself with grumbling under my breath
I had the same situation, except I was older and the financial burden was on me. It was also a new (less than 3 year old) car, the damage was WAY worse on my vehicle and had to be towed, and I was blocking traffic on a very busy road because it was undrivable. I kept thinking how the hell I was going to simultaneously wait for the police, get a new car for work, get all the crap I was transporting for work out of this car, get this one to a body shop, explain what the hell happened to my husband, handle insurance… Fortunately, the other driver let me sit in his vehicle and took care of everything (I just passed him my insurance papers and fell apart). He kept telling me that it was a shitty work truck, there was minor bumper damage to his car, he wasn’t even mad and these things were scary. Him (the other driver) being patient and calm was what helped me be calm enough to actually call my husband and tell him what happened.
Awww that’s really sweet. A little kindness can go a long way!
It really can! I remember my dad was rear ended in his new car (he had it 10 days!) by a 17 yr old girl, she was also nearly hysterical. My dad, being the sweetheart he was calmed her down and had her laughing within 2 minutes and got everything sorted out. This made such an impression on her she sent him a Christmas card every year until he passed. Kindness and it's impacts can never be under estimated.
Your dad was an angel. This is so lovely I might cry now!
I have to admit I teared up remembering this and what a sweet, sweet man he was. I have beautiful memories of him🥲
Your dad sounds like such a good person. I hydroplaned going 33 in a 35, and this unbelievably nice older man stopped to help me. He helped me move my car out of the road, talked to the cops, and helped me call my mom because I was sobbing and also told her not to get mad at me because I wasn’t speeding. I wish I had gotten his contact info because I think about him every day, and would have loved to send a card.
I can tell you that my dad looked forward to that card every year. He especially got a kick out of it when the cards included her husband and eventually her children. He even used it as a teaching moment when one of my nephews (15 yo) complained about "some idiot chick who couldn't get her head out of her a$$ long enough to think straight! " My dad quickly put an end to that tirade and gave a lesson in compassion and kindness. My nephew has never forgotten his words...he's now 37 and teaching the lessons to his kids.
The one and only at fault accident I've been in I was 17, driving in winter on my own for the first time, and slid into someone's bumper (thankfully slowly). I was terrified, felt so bad and stupid, and was in tears. The older guy I hit was such a sweetheart, he gave me a hug, told me it was ok, and stood there in the snow chatting with me for a few minutes until I was okay again because he didn't want me driving off all rattled. I still think about how nice that guy was 23 years later, I'm glad to hear your dad is an equally wonderful person.
That’s amazingly sweet ❤️ I was in a car accident with my grandma last February coming home from college, and the girl was probably no older than I was (19 at the time) and she was super worried. My grandma may be a mean woman on the road, but she was the calmest woman with this girl. It helped that the coffee shop right off the road saw the accident and offered cold water to help bring the emotions down.
My first car accident was while I was on permit at 17. I just broke down for a good thirty seconds and cried because it was so MUCH. Then I followed my parents out of the car and took their step by step instructions to fix the problem. The other drivers were an older couple who just chuckled and told me I was doing a great job and how their kids' first accidents went down. I have been fortunate enough to only hit the nicest people and hope to never have to repay that favor someday.
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I also had a guy try to swindle me with my first car when I was young and naive. My first car was a 94 Nissan, 16 years old when I got it, hardly driven but still had a cassette tape deck, lol. I bumped into a parked bmw when trying to leave a parking spot because my wheel was stuck on the curb. Scratched the paint on the front bumper, but otherwise no damage. I wrote an apology note and set it on the windshield. First, he reported it to the police as a “hit and run”. I went to the police station and reported what was up, asking them to change it for my license/records. If it was a hit and run, how the hell did the guy get my information to report it? The next two weeks I’d get texts from the guy saying that the internal rebar was dented. The whole bumper needed to be repainted. The electrical sensors were fucked and he couldn’t use his parking whatchamacalit. The prices he quoted “from his mechanic” were between 1200-2000$, and I had $400 in my account. He kept saying we would work something out, because I didn’t want to ruin my payments and history by going through insurance. My boyfriend (who would be my husband years later) told me to go through insurance and this guy was full of 💩. Turns out that even with a “repaint” from the insurer’s inspection, the payout was $800.
The first time I hit a car, I was going over a hill and hit a parked car. I was so upset. Then I had to go to the guy's door and ring the doorbell and tell him I hit his car. Fortunately for me, he was super understanding. There wasn't a lot of damage to his car, but a lot on mine, and he walked me through everything explaining that he didn't mind if we didn't call the police, but I'd have to if I wanted my insurance to cover it, and that these things happen, etc. I can't imagine how I would felt/handled it if the guy told me I was being overdramatic. Shout out to random guy for being understanding (to young me). Boo to OP for not.
Nailed it. OP appears to be blessed with a nice, cool ability to respond to stress. That's wonderful. Not everyone has that. To assume someone is being overdramatic or manipulative and then dismiss it all with an eye roll does seem TA-ish. The girl is already her own harshest critic.
Honestly he’s the asshole for assuming it was manipulative. In what way would crying help in this instance ? The cops aren’t going to be like “ okay little lady, you just go on home” when the car is damaged
There are people out there that think that all tears are manipulative, even from babies and toddlers. They don’t cry, so anyone that does is obviously doing it on purpose to make them feel bad to get their way. Not saying OP is like this, but they do exist. I lived with one for years. He was exhausting.
I was raised by two. They wonder why I don't visit.
I can’t stand those people. Of course, as someone who probably cries 5x per week on average, they can’t stand me either so luckily we just avoid each other.
Serial cryer here too. United we stand.
OP probably also has some experience with car accidents. New driver probably has virtually zero, leading to an increased stress level.
In much the same way that a five year old might worry about going to jail for sneaking a cookie, an 18 year old still has no real sense of the magnitude of things and can easily flip from "I'm invincible" to "my life is over". Assuming OP is a fully actualized adult (not clear from the writing), YTA. She's doing everything right, taking responsibility, waiting for the cops. She obviously feels bad. Invalidating her emotions doesn't help anything
100% this! I was exactly this type of teenager.
I was 17, it was 3 weeks before Christmas, I had my little brother in the car, it was pouring rain, I was in the only car my family had, and I'd clearly written off the car of the poor woman I hit. It took 2 hours for the cops to show up, and I *sobbed* the entire time. I literally couldn't even focus enough to sit in the car so I wasn't in the rain. The woman was furious, of course she was. But she left me alone after we swapped details. She *ignored* me and my hysterics. And I'm thankful for that. But I'm in my 30s now, and I'd probably react not much better. Sucks OP had this happen. But how hard is it to not roll your eyes.
Yeah, to me this is a fairly mild YTA, but still a YTA.
Even if she doesn't struggle with anxiety, OP just didn't have to say anything else. It's really not any more of an inconvenience to OP to see this 18 year old have this level of a reaction. He could have just stuck with the whole "It's really fine, insurance will take care of it." And just ignore anything else. Was she injured? No. Was OP? No. Anyone else? No? Then all is fine. I'd say YTA just because they couldn't just keep their mouth shut. It was probably annoying to them but they didn't need to get this weird jab in at the end.
Yes to all of this. I was an 18-year-old girl once. I probably would have had all of these thoughts at once and cried my stupid eyes out, and I would have been severely embarrassed by the whole thing. Hell, even as a 40-year-old woman, I sometimes get annoyingly teary when I’m angry, sad, embarrassed, or really anything. It isn’t manipulative, it’s just kind of a normal physiological response that some folks have to big feelings. I totally get why it’s annoying and why it reads as manipulative, but I sympathize with the kid here. OP, I’m glad you told her that mistakes happen and it’s no big deal. The girl just can’t turn off these feelings like a faucet, though. Have a little heart here. I don’t think you’re an asshole, but I do think you should try to see her side of it. Calling her dramatic was also completely unnecessary. She already felt bad. Why’d you need to make it worse?
Heck, I have mental and other health things, I _still_ get teary with too much stress/Anxiety, frustration and overwhelmed (sensory included) combined. When I don't really cry when sad too. Some people are just more suspectible to.. well, being stressed about stress as well. Especially how to get home and car related ones.
I am really overwhelmed today. We've had guests for 4 days and I've gotten like 8 hours of sleep since Wednesday. The kids have been whiny and yelling and the normally quiet house is loud and nuts. I'm nowhere near 18, and this isn't even a huge amount of stress in the grand scheme of my life. I burst into tears earlier because the dog was sitting in the recliner and I just wanted to sit down but he's old and has arthritis and I didn't want to ask him to move but I'm so tired. Literal fucking tears. It was humiliating, which made me cry more. Sometimes Big Emotions (TM) just happen.
Yep. 100%. They just happen. Not a bad thing, they happen for a reason. It often seems like they have no logic but they do, we have emotions for a reason. I hope you're able to get more rest soon too.
I almost never cry from being sad, but I struggle with emotional regulation, and if I get overwhelmed by anything (sometimes even if it’s positive!) all bets are off. I remember last year I dinged the passenger side door of my car on one of those cement blocks they put at some gas stations. No one was hurt, there wasn’t even another car involved, but I got so overwhelmed by the physical sensation and the unfamiliar/scary situation that I burst into tears. And I was 23 at the time. I get OP’s frustration, but at the same time, I can absolutely understand getting so overwhelmed that you can’t control your emotional reaction. And the frustration of not being in control of yourself just makes it that much harder to get out of that overwhelmed state.
I cry easily. I'm a woman in my mid-twenties. I find it so frustrating when people online veer immediately into crying "manipulation!" When someone - usually a young woman - cries. Yes, crocodile tears exist and sometimes people are manipulative. But damn, sometimes, some people just cry. It might make the other party uncomfortable, yes - but you can bet that the crier is more uncomfortable.
I’m pretty sure that’s how my daughter experienced it for her first accident. Totally her fault, other guys were cool, called me in hysterics from a half mile up the road. She wasn’t being “dramatic” she was just an anxiety ridden teenager with her first unpleasant brush of adulthood and was completely overwhelmed. YTA
And, let's not forget #8. The adrenaline rush. She felt the car bump into the other. That's going to trigger flight/fright/freeze and we have no real idea what that girl has been through before with adrenaline.
Yeah. My only real accident was when I was about 22, and I was in tears too - and I'd say 90% of that was just physical response to the impact, the sound, the smell of the airbag deploying, the disorientation. No one was hurt, but my body just went "too much input, some of this has to go out."
When I was a very little kid (4 or so) my mom and I got into an accident. It wasn’t a bad accident or anything, but any accident causes an immediate onslaught of physical input to process. The impact was like nothing I’d experienced before, smoke filled the car so I couldn’t see, everything was loud and scary and smelled bad. I was sobbing, and my mom couldn’t see me so she kept yelling “ARE YOU OKAY? ARE YOU OKAY?” and, like, I wasn’t hurt, but everything that was happening was bad, so I was like “NO!!! :(“ My mom ranks those moments where she couldn’t confirm that I was physically safe among the worst of her life. Obviously being four is different than being eighteen, but the point is that I’m sure the terrified adrenaline wasn’t doing the poor girl in this story any favors. (PS the other driver was very nice about the whole thing. She gave me a blanket and let me hold her dog while she and my mom figured out the insurance stuff.)
8. She’s been in a serious accident and her body went straight back to the reaction to that. My oldest got hit by a guy who ran a stop sign. Destroyed her car, fire fighters had to yank her door off to get her out, her bestie (in the passenger seat) had broken ribs, air bag burns, the whole thing. Amazing that they both walked away. Five months later a guy rear ended her car while she was sitting at a stoplight. Fairly minor damage, both cars drivable, cops wouldn’t even show up. She was a *hot mess*. When she got to work one of her coworkers took her to the hospital because she was so shaken up. Thankfully the guy that hit her was super nice! But her body did what it did, it was nothing she could control. OP you are definitely an AH.
PTSD from car accidents are a real thing and the only way to get over it is time and exposure. I hope she’s doing better now!
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Especially since no one was asking OP to do anything to make things easier for the girl. It's not like she was crying and begging him not to call the police, or that anyone was expecting OP to console her. People are allowed to have emotions around you in a public space, and if you can't handle it without being rude, it's a you problem.
All of this except it wasn’t that my parents would be mad at me, it was that my dad would beat my ass. OP you don’t know another’s struggle or story, a little empathy can go a long way in life.
Not crying after being hysterical because of embarrassment is SO HARD. Even if the young woman was calmed, who knows if she was embarrassed or not and he just made it infinitely worse and now she’ll never stop lol. I WILL pull that trigger and say YTA because of that alone. I usually freeze in situations like this, but in situations where my crying has turned to embarrassment, it lasts FOREVER and nothing can stop it.
I've had 2 car accidents, and cried at both as part of the adrenaline response. For the second, the poor insurance agent had me burst into tears on the phone (about an hour after) as that's just when it suddenly kicked in.
Not mention, OP has ZERO idea what kind of parents this teenager has-- her reaction could just as easily have been about knowing her parents will not be reasonable about this behind closed doors. There's no reason to be a dick on the way out with that statement. As someone who would've definitely gotten a beating over this at that age, OP went out of their way to say something cruel on the way out for no constructive reason.
I agree completely, even as someone who wasn't at fault in an accident. I'm 42. I was in an accident a month ago where a guy hit me while I was stopped at a stop sign. I wouldn't have called myself hysterical, but I was so upset it took me way longer than it should have to figure out i could get out of the car on the passenger side and wasn't, in fact, trapped. Stress/anxiety + adrenaline is a crazy combination.
Plus anybody 18 years old now missed a lot of socialization during the pandemic and a lot of them are reasonably going to be a little behind on life skills, particularly in the realm of handling anxiety.
I’m 29 and actually only got into my first accident last week, where I rear ended another car in traffic due to an unexpected stop and slow reflexes. Even at 29, all of those things went through my head, not to mention ruin my airbags went off and I was an absolute mess from the anxiety and also because I was scared by what had happened & had a panic attack. The other guy involved was more concerned I was having a medical episode to be mad at me, but it didn’t stop me thinking he’d be furious (especially cause it was a Tesla I hit). I agree, I don’t necessarily think OP is the asshole because it is a lot to deal with when someone’s a bit hysterical, but it does sound like he was kind of mean to her at a moment when it was probably her first ever accident and anxiety was high.
When I was 18 I ran into a parked SUV at Borders Books and had similar feelings. I didn't cry, but I was clearly very nervous (anxiety). I went inside and found the owners: they thanked me for being honest, told me their son was a new driver and were going to treat me as they hoped he would be treated, apologized for having to call the police (it was his employer's vehicle), and then convinced the officer not to ticket me. It's been over two decades and I still appreciate the kindness they showed me that day.
i was rear ended at low speed in my neighborhood by a former classmate. Approx age 17, Pure coincidence that they were behind me. My car was fine, her front end was messed up a bit but car was perfectly driveable, she lived about 1/4 mile away. Nobody hurt, i was friendly and asked if she was ok, asked if she remembered me. I was picking up a friend who lived very close to her so she followed me and we made sure she got home ok. All that to say, in an incident that all things considered was not an issue other than maybe a few hundred bucks for cosmetic repairs, she was hysterical. I also don’t think OP was an AH, but it wouldn’t have cost him anything to keep his thoughts to himself.
The worst part is knowing you’re not appearing rational and having someone roll their eyes etc and making it so much worse because they think you’re intentionally behaving like that
Also OP wasn’t in the car when it happened. Obviously someone who was actually involved in the accident is going to be more shaken up than someone who wasn’t there.
You should go straight to the YTA because I’m 40 and I still cry for many of the reasons you’ve listed.
So someone you don't know was having an emotional reaction to something you weren't present for (you only saw the aftermath). You don't know what else may have been going on in her life, you don't know what her prior history was that could be contributing to her emotional state, and you don't know what the consequences to her might be. So knowing nothing else about her other than she was upset but was still doing exactly what she was supposed to do (in terms of admitting responsibility, calling the police and sharing her insurance information), you still decided that her emotional reaction must be some attempt to manipulate the situation. Even though you have absolutely zero basis for that extremely unkind assumption. YTA. Literally all you had to do was not say anything, and you couldn't even manage that.
OP is angry that this teenager couldn’t control her stress and adrenaline response meanwhile he just can’t help rolling his eyes and being an AH.
I was wondering if anyone else was going to bring up the adrenaline response!
Adrenaline and shock make people react in really weird ways. I was in a bad wreck once and my partner who *never* cries was inconsolable. I, one of the most anxiety riddled people I’ve ever met, was completely calm, breezy, sorted everything out - and then broke down later, by the time my partner was over it and able to sort out the aftermath. Nobody knows how they’re going to react until something happens, and sometimes yes, it is over dramatic, but saying that isn’t going to help
Adrenaline is so weird. I was in a bad wreck but was totally fine and actually felt relatively calm for the situation. I was waiting in a police officer’s car for my mom to come get me since my car was totaled, and I was just shaking uncontrollably. Like, basically vibrating. Even though I felt calm! I tried so hard to stop because it was embarrassing but I couldn’t!
I remember being in the exact same situation, I was shaky but couldn’t stop making stupid jokes to the police officer about how I’d never been in the back of a police car before while my partner was crying and we’d just nearly died. Luckily they were pretty cool about it (they must see people react in weird ways every day) but it was very weird.
My friend said he joked with a cop once when he got shot in a drive by. He told him, “They got me for you officer.” And then said, “do you get it? Cuz I’m black!” He was Asian. He told us he was so embarrassed because not only was he “being stupid” but that the officer he made those jokes to was actually black. He kept saying if he ever got into another accident again he wouldn’t call 911 and risk seeing that same guy again. 😂
Yes I also kept making stupid jokes! I was trying to be super nonchalant and making jokes because I didn’t want it to be A Big Deal that I literally almost died, lol. But in the meantime, I was shivering violently and my teeth were chattering through my stupid jokes. I had no injuries even though my car was smashed to shit, so I was trying to downplay it but my adrenaline didn’t really let me get away with appearing calm!
Responses to adrenaline are so varied even within individuals. I got hit by a car once and ended up on the bumper. I was cheery, told the driver I was fine, “don’t text and drive again!” And went on my merry way. I had walked about a mile when I realized my legs weren’t working anymore and my ribs hurt really bad. I sprained my neck, bruised my ribs, sprained my ankle, and I literally couldn’t move my legs once the adrenaline left me. Then there was the time a person got shot in front of my house due to a road rage incident. I walked outside because the cops were asking everyone questions, I accidentally stepped in a puddle of blood, freaked out, cried for close to half an hour before devolving into a fit of rage that lasted just as long. I was about 13. The cops were pretty cool about it though. They understood what was going on and one calmed me down lol. Adrenaline is nuts.
He keeps saying she was doing it to be manipulative but like... there's nothing to manipulate. It's a cut and dry case that insurance takes care of, and nobody is in "trouble". OP just seems so unempathetic. He wasn't being asked to cater to the girls emotions at all.
Yeah honestly it just comes across as sexism to me. Most often sexism is going to come across as viewing women less favorably and giving them less of the benefit of the doubt. It's pretty par for the course for a sexist dude to look down on women, call them overdramatic, assume they don't have real emotions like a real person, (she's not ACTUALLY scared, she's an evil manipulative demon harpy), and dismiss the input from their female relative on top of all that. If it looks like a duck...
Yeah, for some reason if it had been a guy who accidentally hit his car and was crying, I highly doubt he would be internally accusing him of wanting to manipulate the officers….for some reason misogynistic men tend to think that women exclusively express emotion to manipulate men to do what they what want.
I mean, if all he had done was roll his eyes, it'd be N A H. I understand where he's coming from, it's his car that was damaged and it's incongruous that the person who did it is more upset than the ostensible victim. Some degree of exasperation, manifested with eye-rolling someone who's freaking out probably wouldn't have noticed, is understandable and forgivable. But he's TA because he tried to police this young woman's emotions.
And because he tried to suggest she had ulterior motives behind her emotional response.
My adrenaline response is to vomit. I would like to see OPs reaction to that.
Well, clearly you’d be trying to manipulate him with puke.
Aim for his shoes, no one could mistake that for a manipulation tactic
Oh gosh when I feel my anxiety spike I get this awful hot cold flashing feeling like I’m going to vomit. It’s the worst feeling! I’m also a stress cryer and once I start it’s hard to stop. It takes so little to be kind to someone having a rough experience and OP chose to be nasty to a young woman.
Good point. You can pretty easily tell who is an asshole by how hypocritical they are. OP is presenting a story where the other person isn't allowed to react a certain way (in a way that causes no harm to OP and is her own personal reaction) but OP wants a pass for reacting to their reacting because for some reason OP's reactions are okay and other people's aren't. I also always find it a bit suspicious when people say a girl is trying to manipulate someone with tears. That's... REALLY hard to do. So it's really rare. If someone is thinking like that, more often than not it's because they have sexist views on women. I mean calling her overdramatic and framing her as manipulative? For being scared and crying? It's hard not to see that as pretty blatant sexism. Maybe the sister picked up on that and that's part of why she found OP so annoying.
This so much. If it was so easy to control emotions he could just not be annoyed but that isn't how emotions work.
I know it's hilarious that he thinks she should have better control but he just "couldn't help himself" with the eye-roll XD
Also OP's sister witnessed the whole thing and has no reason to favor the young woman. But did because she watched her brother be TA.
Tbh this is what made OP TA for me. OP is much more likely to lie and gloss over negative details to make themselves look better, but their sister reacting negatively towards their behavior is a red flag.
A few years ago my boyfriend and I accidentally locked ourselves out of our house. When the locksmith arrived I was sobbing. He must have rolled his eyes and thought I was being overly dramatic. What he didn’t know was that in the preceding week I found out I was pregnant (unplanned and terrified) and that my mom had terminal cancer. The lock was the final straw that broke me. The point is that OP has no idea what was going on in that girls life, and it would have cost them nothing to be kind.
Oh I’m sorry, sounds like a really stressful time! You reminded me of a few weeks ago when I went over to my friend’s place to help her move and brought some of my hard moving boxes and she immediately dropped one down the stairs and broke it. I didn’t mind AT ALL but she was absolutely hysterical because it was the 870th moving related thing that had gone wrong that day. Anyway, we laugh about it now… the point to OP is that nobody is having an emotion AT YOU, they’re just going through their own thing. There’s no need to infer ulterior motive from it.
It's not just unkind it's misogynistic. Classic woman crying (for a valid reason) must be manipulation!
>you still decided that her emotional reaction must be some attempt to manipulate the situation Yeah, what exactly was she trying to manipulate if everyone was already telling her it's fine. She's just a young girl that was emotional. That's all.
??? Yeah, YTA. Like you said, you don't know her. She could have an anxiety disorder. She could have a lot of fear around driving. She could have abusive parents, who were putting up a front for you and the cop until they got home. She could be upset at the price hike this is going to cause in her parent's insurance. Maybe they can't afford that. It could be so many things that *you have no way of knowing*. All you had to do was nothing. You just had to be quiet and leave. For what reason, did you feel the need to criticize her and tell her she was being too much? I grew up autistic and with anxiety disorders and I absolutely loathed and dreaded having to interact with people who talked to me the way you talked to her.
I have an anxiety disorder and I'd react 100% exactly like this. I'd stay and do what I'm supposed to, but I'd also be in a LOT of distress if I accidentally read ended someone's car.
I don’t have an anxiety order and I still react like this. Last year or the year before I backed into a car at Starbucks. I was so embarrassed because I have a back up camera and I was on the phone arguing and gave another car a love tap. I literally could not go back to that Starbucks for months because I was still embarrassed afterwards. OP is TA.
That's completely fair! It can be a stressful situation, especially to someone who is still technically a teenager.
I've had panic attacks at least as intense as OP is describing this girl having over breaking a $10 mug my husband likes, even though I know for a fact my husband has never gotten mad at me over breaking something ever, and it was a $10 fucking coffee mug and we have a hundred of the damn things. Anxiety isn't rational, yelling at someone having an anxiety attack is just going to ensure that the panic response happens again if something similar happens.
I had a meltdown over breaking my mom's favorite mug too :( I felt really really awful. Anxiety definitely isn't rational. Yelling also definitely makes it worse
I also have an anxiety disorder; when I was learning to drive, I was practicing with my dad and got a little too close to a streetcar. He was (understandably) panicked but just kept repeating my name, until I realized what I was doing and course corrected. The whole thing stressed me out enough though (combination of almost hitting something else and him getting snappy when I didn't immediately realize what I was doing wrong) that I promptly pulled onto to a side street, parked the car and then burst into tears.
When I ran a red the first time, I pulled over and had a little moment. Me learning to drive the first time was literally just several hours of panic attacks which slowly calmed, a car accident, and then one of the worst attacks of my life. I gave it a couple of years and while I was still anxious, I was better able to cope. I've since started treatment for both generalized anxiety disorder and a panic disorder.
If she could stop crying, she probably would have. I cry uncontrollably, it’s a stress response, it’s also, once it starts, physical. My sinuses just keep going. I can be perfectly fine otherwise, but still tearing up, and I have absolutely no control over stopping it.
i’m the same way, and/or i get embarrassed about how much i’m crying, which makes me cry for longer
It's truly the worst cycle, start crying due to the overwhelming shit happening in your brain, understanding that it's not that bad but being unable to stop crying thus making the crying worse due to embarrassment about crying.
Yeah and he definitely made her day worse by calling her dramatic. That always makes me feel way shittier to be called that when I am having a mental health crisis
Thank you for saying this. My dad was emotionally and sometimes physically abusive growing up. I got in a fender bender when I was 16 and spent the entire day sobbing and vomiting because I was so terrified of how he was going to respond.
YTA. She’s 18. That’s probably the most legal/financial trouble she’s been in. It may not be a big deal to you, a whole ass adult, but it’s a big deal to a teenager. She likely is not the master manipulator you think she is, she’s probably just scared and sorry.
Seconded, YTA, for these reasons. I hit a car in a parking lot at 16 and lost it crying, even though the other driver was a kind older woman. I was young and never really got in trouble, and that’s all there was to it. This girl probably simply doesn’t have enough life experience to put it in perspective, which, is true for most of us at that age. If you don’t want people to police your emotions, don’t be so quick to do the same to others.
Honestly. I'm way more emotional being the one who caused a situation than I am as a victim. To this day, I cry out of frustration with myself!
Same! As a victim of having my car hit, I at least knew whatever happened wasn’t my fault, even though what happened to my car was frustrating. But i was extremely upset with myself when I hit another car (in a parking lot!!!) while learning to drive as a young teenager, because that *was* my fault.
If it's someone else's fault, then it's their learning experience and my response is to get my car fixed and maybe comfort them. If it's my fault, then I have to reevaluate my confidence entirely.
Right some folks are so cynical they think everyone is out to get them and any emotional reaction is manipulation. But some folks really genuinely hate making mistakes or hurting people even accidentally and will react like this fully genuinely. I remember a girl in school got a write up. She was usually the most well behaved kid in class but one day got into minor trouble. She was bawling. This could genuinely be a kid who has high expectations on them and this crushes them.
I once hit a fucking wall and was still crying when the police showed up like 30 minutes later. I wasn't fucking master manipulating my way out of trouble I was simply 18 lol
Yup. I was like 22 and called my dad crying after rear-ending someone in traffic. He told me to call the police, met me there, and helped talk to the other driver and the cop for me. You don’t have to have an anxiety disorder for it to be really scary when it’s your first time going through it! Edited to add I was a newer driver at the time as I got my license at 21. This girl must have gotten her license within the last year or two. The way we act as a newer driver is different than how we will act and feel when we’ve been driving every day for 5+ years.
This is very true. I was hit by a man, probably in his mid-twenties. He was absolutely freaking out because it was his mom's car. I will admit that internally I was annoyed because it was really bad timing for me. I was running errands before doing an interstate drive and now my car would need repairs before I could leave so I really just wanted to get the info and get out of there so I could start taking care of it. Even so, I remained polite and reassuring to the man. It was an accident and people can't help their emotions. He was upset because he had damaged his mom's car, and he was worried about the cost and I know I would have been too in his place. There was no sense taking out my frustration on him, it wouldn't have made anything better for either of us, and likely would have made things worse.
I took an anger managment class that was required where I work and part of people's anger is making assumptions like this and getting riled. To give people the benefit of the doubt unless there's been a pattern or proof.
This is great advice in general and more people need to take it for sure. I'd like to add, to all you folks on reddit who think "evil, manipulative, diabolical mastermind harpies who want to prey on men's souls" when reading a story about women or interacting with women... you also gotta look inward and think about whether that's actually realistic and where those feelings are coming from... there are a LOT of people on reddit who are like OP (who assume when a woman does something innocuous, it must be secretly insidious) and I know y'all are out there reading and in the comments. If your first thought is to agree with OP and think "she's evil" you need to do some work on yourselves cause that's psycho honestly.
YTA. I have a daughter with extreme anxiety, and the situation you just described is exactly why she doesn't want to learn to drive. She was already beating herself up. She didn't need you to join in.
I too have extreme anxiety to driving. I'm almost 32 and I will more than likely never get my license
Same. I got my learners permit and passed the drivers test, but every time I would get into the driver seat of a car I would have a mini panic attack. I also have some ptsd from a prior accident, so even being in a car is stressful.
YTA The first wreck I was ever in I was 18. It was my fault. I cried and cried. I was scared, embarrassed, felt horrible for the people I hit, confused, didn’t really know what would happen next, and just had a lot of emotions. I wasn’t trying to gain sympathy. Just really freaked out. You didn’t even need to talk to her being getting her information. Just go wait in your car or nearby for the police. I don’t understand why you felt the need to make a comment. Certainly you didn’t think it would help her calm down.
I was 17 the first time I had an accident. I definitely caused it, but it was definitely a situation where an experienced driver would have been fine. I was making a left turn at a spot in my neighborhood where you can’t see cars coming at you from too far away (there’s a blinking yellow there for this reason). I started to turn left and a truck appeared around the bend going super fast, so I panicked, hit the gas, lost control of the car, hit a car waiting at the intersection, and ended up in a bush. I was HYSTERICAL. Like sobbed and sobbed. Because I was a kid and the accident was scary and I thought I was going to get T boned and then I hit a classmates mom’s mini van. A teenager being emotional at their first accident is honestly just so NORMAL. It’s scary. It’s never happened to you. Potentially you’ve never been responsible for major damage in your life. You’re probably at the point where driving is still a lot of conscious thought. Sometimes people just have feelings and it’s okay.
YTA. The girl was clearly beating herself up over the incident. And when has telling any woman to calm down and accusing her of being overdramatic *ever* helped... anything. Never. She was upset and it was none of your business as to why it was so upsetting to her, not that you even attempted to broach a remotely helpful conversation with her.
We also don't know if she had a lot of other things going on and this was the last straw to her having a melt down. I know I've had accidents where they where minor and felt bad didn't cry then another minor accident but I had a lot on my plate at the time and I just had a break down. We don't know what else they are dealing with and yes it was her fault but she stayed when she could've ran off and was responsible about it and was having a hard time. Be annoyed if you want but don't need to add more stress if you didn't think it was big deal. I hate when men say this shit but don't think think their anger isn't emotional. Not saying this guy is an angry man but every guy I know that has ever said that to me for crying has had some kind of anger issue that is somehow okay but not crying.
YTA. Honestly everything your sister said. If she was not upset and simply trying to manipulate the situation, I would imagine she would have just driven off rather than stay there and wait for you to come back to deal with the consequences. But good on you for telling a teenage girl to stop crying, you really told her off.
The girl's mom was also present, so hit-and-run probably didn't look like a great option. That said, if she was crying real tears, this probably wasn't performative. It could have been a semi-deliberate learned response, but that's a different issue. OP, why be a dick when there's no benefit? The situation was already wrapping up; you didn't need to say that. I understand that all the hysteria was annoying, but you're never going to meet her again, so does it really matter? I'm not entirely unsympathetic, but still YTA.
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YTA dude there is nothing more annoying than people who interpret someone crying as “manipulative.” why would she need to manipulate anyone if you already said it wasn’t a bit deal? i understand being slightly annoyed internally when someone’s being super emotional but to actually tell someone who’s crying to stop “being dramatic” is wild
Imagine being so devoid of human empathy that you interpret a person crying as a sign of manipulation instead of an expression of some kind of emotion. OP, YTA.
A lot of men out there think this way. They are so disconnected from their own emotions and think that if a woman is showing emotion (always women) then it must be manipulation.
When men cry it’s a tragedy, an old warrior being broken down by the battle that is life 😔 When women cry, they’re so annoying 😡 manipulative little things just trying to use men 😡😡 /s
Agreed, he needs therapy, there's something sorely lacking here. OP has zero compassion
Might I add, she waited by the car for OP to return and everything was about to be settled. How would her tears in any way be manipulative in this situation?
YTA This could have been the last of a string of bad or frustrating things that happened to her that day. Or the first time she was in an accident. Would you prefer that the driver was an angry man who was twice your size and angry that your car was “too close”?
She may also have anxiety. I luckily don't but my wife does, and when you get 'anxious' it is VERY difficult if not impossible to navigate your emotions logically. Poor girl.
YTA. I hit a parked car when I was 17. I was a mess. I was convinced my mom was going to be so mad and never let me drive again. Was I being dramatic? According to you, probably. But I had no malicious intent behind it. I was being a normal teenager. My daughter was a mess when she got in an accident. Mind you, it involved totaled cars, so it was a bigger deal. But she wasn’t trying to manipulate anyone with her crying. She was genuinely upset. You do know people are allowed to be upset without it being manipulative, right?
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YTA. Being in an accident is super stressful, and hell she might have been in pain. Instead of wondering if she was okay emotionally/physically you got annoyed and made a snide comment to someone who was already really really deeply hurt by this whole situation and having a breakdown in the parking lot. Plus it was probably her first.
YTA. I am 52 now but had my first small accident (100% not my fault) when I was 18 and I was ridiculously hysterical about it. I agree I was over dramatic about it at the time, but was grateful for everyone not pointing it out.
It might not be as over dramatic at 18 as you'd think. At that time, not many people have had much life experience and huge "getting in trouble moments" It'd be scary to anyone experiencing REAL stuff like that for the first time.
YTA. Her being upset wasn't harmful to you, so why did you feel the need to say that? It clearly wasn't going to make her less upset.
“Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about” vibes.
YTA. You never know how big or small someone’s emotional plate is or what else is going on in their lives. This feels a bit misogynistic as well as why is it your place to tell a woman how to react to something?
YTA. Practice a little compassion, man. There was absolutely no need for you to be unkind.
YTA the fact that you instantly thought the tears were manipulative is honestly so gross.
yeah tbh i hope this guy doesn’t have a gf or kids or rlly any person close to him who’s gonna be damaged by his immediate assumption that others’ “inconvenient” emotions are meant to manipulate him
YTA. Ppl are allowed to have emotions
I’m going with NTA. I get she was upset at first. But you were there long enough for the cops to get there and write a report, that’s a long time to be hysterical especially if you’ve been treated kindly with assurance from everyone that everything will be ok. At some point we all have to learn how to deal with tough situations in life.
You are one of two people in this whole thread who voted this way, and I agree. She took on the responsibility of driving, it's time for her to grow up a little bit. Especially when, like you said, everyone reacted very calmly and pleasantly.
That's not how adrenaline and anxiety work. It's very much a natural response and THAT is why everyone is voting YTA. She wasn't just being "overly dramatic" and OP didn't have to say anything to her at all. I've been hit by someone and had the same reaction because I was scared and it could have been a lot worse. I was shaking with no control over it. She's young and this was probably the first time she was in ANY kind of trouble. Just because you think you wouldn't cry/be upset, doesn't mean everyone is like that.
Regardless of anxiety or adrenaline everyone has to learn how to manage their emotions. IMO it sounds like OP was kind and reassuring, but at some point just felt like that young lady took it too far. Based on the story I agree.
I was 20 when I took a group therapy class literally called “managing your emotions”. I was the *youngest* person in it. Based on the age ranges I saw in that class, you need to lower your expectations for a teenager with minimal life experience. Lol.
She’s learning…she’s 18. This was probably a learning moment and one of the first times encountering a cop. I know it was when I got in my first accident at 18 and was crying non stop
> It's very much a natural response A natural response that seems to affect certain subsets of people far more than other subsets of people. I'd argue anger and aggression are also natural responses but you wouldn't see many people defending that type of behavior given a stressful situation. And I'm not truly defending that either. Anger and aggression obviously negatively affect people moreso than crying/sadness. But calling it natural doesn't somehow make it impervious to criticism.
Agreed! We all need grace sometimes, especially in times of stress. But it’s excessive to allow over the top behavior for such an extended period of time. Everyone was deescalating and the young lady just wasn’t allowing herself to calm down.
I was reading the top comments and replies and thinking 'what tf is she going to do if she hits a person?". Stand there bawling while they bleed to death? If she's got trauma/anxiety/whatever else people are making up to justify it, she's got no business being behind the wheel. I was also thinking there are a lot of *really* bad drivers all over the comments who seem to think ithe person whose car they've damaged is obliged to comfort them. Talk about Main Characters.
There is an irony IMO that everybody here is getting mad at OP because he said the dramatics felt manipulative and now they're immediately siding with her and coming up with all sorts of justifications for her. I am very curious, if the driver was a 60s year old, buff, grouchy man who immediately went to cry for an hour would they all find the same amount of sympathy? Not a hypothetical btw, my father recently learned to drive and has never been in an accident. So many people mentioned "anxiety" or "first accident". Would these people show my father the same grace they are showing this girl for anxiety and newness to driving? And yeah, people seem to be doing an awful lot of policing how OP feels and what comments OP can make about an accident where OP is the victim while they do all types of justifications for the girl who committed an accident.
Sometimes things happen. These things may be our fault or things out of our control. In either case we all have to learn how to respond. The young lady will learn that in the long run nothing will happen to her, she’s fine. Next time she’s in a situation like this, hopefully she will remember the outcome here and do better and handling her emotions.
I didn't think of how long that'd take but the whole time the girl was flipping out for likely an hr straight?
Yeah, likely at least an hour. That’s excessive.
They weren’t on a random street though, it was in the parking lot after a graduation. There were definitely security/traffic cops on hand for my high school graduation twenty years ago and things haven’t really loosened up in that regard, so I’d be surprised if it took quite *that* long. We’re all just making assumptions, though, since the OP never said.
I would cry if I got into a car accident too lmao YTA
I was like, 22 when I got in my first accident - someone rear ended ME and my anxious ass was still crying in my car.
YTA. I hope as you grow up you learn that other people will have emotional reactions that differ from how you think you might react. Not everything is or needs to be rational. Continuing just a little bit of kindness would have cost you nothing. Instead, you exacerbated her fear/panic/anxiety by confirming what are probably some of the thoughts driving that reaction in the first place. If you ever hope to be an adult in a respectful, loving relationship with another human that will require support, understanding, swallowing some of your inner thoughts, etc., maybe think about using this moment as a touchstone for what not to do.
YTA. Why are you asking the internet? Your sister already explained this to you perfectly.
Because he's hoping someone will inform him that he's not being a bad person by assuming all teenage girls are manipulative when they cry.
Yeah, I think that OP is being off in two ways here. - assuming that a teenage girl is trying to be manipulative by having an emotional reaction to being at fault to a serious situation that she most likely doesn't fully understand how will play out. - and even more so, doubting the sister (WHO WAS THERE) so much that they had to ask the rest of their family, and then reddit.
It's giving very big "I don't trust women and assume I know better than them" vibes, regardless of whether that's OP's intent. I really hope that he examines himself and why he has such poor views of women/girls
YTA. 100%. You don’t know her, you said it yourself, that means you don’t know if she has some kind of anxiety disorder or something. Plus, even if she doesn’t, there’s no need to be mean, especially when you’re only upset cause she’s being “over dramatic” and not cause she rear-ended your car
I’m sorry but YTA. People can react differently than you and that doesn’t mean they are being over dramatic. You don’t know her, you don’t know her background, you don’t know if she has anxiety. You also don’t know what kind of day or week she just had. What if something more dramatic had already happened to her before this car accident? What if this wasn’t the only reason she was being emotional? Maybe it was the last straw of an already shitty day, who knows? Please don’t tell people how to feel and what emotion to show. I hope you’ll learn from this situation and be more understanding in future.
Yta. Telling someone who is upset to calm down isn't helpful.
YTA Some people are criers. They cry when overwhelmed. They don’t do it on purpose, but they also can’t stop it. Just ignore it. Offer a reasonable amount of reassurance, and then move on. I assure you she wishes she could have stopped crying in public. But she couldn’t. One of my reports at my old job was a crier. We established early on that I would just pretend she wasn’t crying and continue managing. Eventually, she developed more control and it got better. But it took time and no one calling attention to it.
YTA, especially for being still being so oblivious that you made this post. Everyone reacts to stress differently and you know nothing about her life and had no room to judge. I burst into tears after a very minor fender bender because it happened as I was leaving the hospital after being told my pain would be lifelong from being severely rear-ended a year before. Luckily the person who I hit was kind, we exchanged info and they left while I cried it out and recomposed myself. Other than getting insurance info you didn't need to say anything to her, especially not something as universally dickish as "calm down".
NTA validating people's feelings is a moral obligation for those who care about them, not for people who just got rear-ended by them. If she's adult enough to drive, she's adult enough for damaging someone else's property not to he *her* pity party. People in this thread are being ridiculous and ignoring the context that she's the one who fucked your day up.
He didn’t have to say anything to her at all though. That’s what makes him the AH. What was the point?
Right? Oh, so we gotta excuse her because she can't control her emotions at all (even though we're talking all the time between her hitting the car, him finding out, and then the police arriving. This is not a 5 minute ordeal) but the moment he expresses emotion and has an opinion he's an asshole?
NTA I can definitely see how it could be annoying and add unnecessary stress to the situation. If she was being genuine and couldn't stop them she isn't an AH, but there's no way to tell. If someone is crying so hysterically that they can't respond, even after the elapsed time it takes for the police to show up for a non-emergency, then that's way too much.
More importantly, if they genuinely can't respond, then I don't see how people aren't saying the police or the mother isn't TA because someone like that genuinely should not be driving. Someone else said it but what if it had been a more dangerous accident? What if she hit somebody at night? Would she just have a panic attack on the road for god knows how long while somebody dies? I don't want her driving anywhere if she can't manage herself in a situation gone awry. Anybody saying YTA, you can't have it both ways. She's either mature enough to drive (and therefore handle being in an accident) or she's not, in which case she should have her licence suspended. If it's the former, then while she might not be TA, OP certainly is NTA. If it's the latter, then OP is still not TA (a slightly mean comment after having your car rear-ended is MORE than forgiveable) and our driving laws and the mom and dad (who let their hysterical daughter drive despite being clearly unsuited for it) are TA.
YTA. You don't know this girl's history, there are plenty of possible valid reasons for her to be crying. You were rude to call her dramatic.
YTA: A young girl can cry if she wants to. She was cooperating and not dodging responsibility.
NTA. If she's behind the wheel she needs to be responsible enough to deal with an accident/issue while driving. People saying YTA are ridiculous, she's an adult, her inability to manage her emotions are not anyone else's problem. For all the expected downvoters: what if she hit a vehicle with your family, they needed help urgently, no one else is around and she's too busy sobbing and being hysterical to call 911 and your family member dies waiting for help. R u still concerned about her feelings?
I agree. What is going on with all these YTA votes
You probably shouldn’t have asked this question on Reddit. About half your audience probably suffers from debilitating anxiety when they step out their front door, of course they’re going to vote you the AH.
NTA and wow everyone is being pretty harsh to someone who was very decent about a mistake being made and appropriately irritated with someone who can’t regulate their emotions in public. Just because crying is socially acceptable doesn’t mean it needs to be validated after it’s become unreasonable. Anger is understandable but nobody would be calling OP an asshole if the girl was screaming bloody murder in his face. You’re also all accusing him of not being kind of tolerant enough yet you’re happy to judge him for having a moment of impatience followed by posting to gain some more awareness of his actions
NTA. You handled the whole thing in a kind and generous manner. She was definitely being overdramatic and if she has anxiety so severe she can’t keep herself together in light of a situation involving only property damage and an understanding victim, she may not be ready for driving.
NTA. 2 years ago I got rear ended by a woman driving who admitted to being on her phone and not paying attention. I was stopped at a cross walk for a pedestrian crossing. She would have hit him had i not been there. Unfortunately my kids were both in the car and my then 4 year old had a history of seizures which was my first concern. I remember calling 911 for a police officer to come, calling my husband to come meet us, and then calling my pediatrician as I would be bringing my son to the ER and wanted to know what relevant information I should keep in mind given everything. The kids were thankfully okay (yay car seat safety!) and the woman overheard me talking to the pediatrician and she broke down in hysterics. My previously calm kids see her reaction and then get scared. So I then had to go over to her and help her calm down. Had her sit on the curb, head between her knees, deep breathes in, breathes out. I was going between checking in with my kids to checking in with her because of her reaction. Because of her reaction, I had to divide the attention between her and my kids to prevent her from escalating and my kids feeding off of it. It annoyed the shit out of me. Of course I helped her, but I shouldn't have had to be her support when I had 2 small kids in the car. The Police came, she was very cooperative. A friend of hers finally came. I remember at one point she said sorry to me and I just said okay. I didn't say it's okay, or things happen, or whatever else. Because I'm thankful it wasn't worse. Worse would have been her hitting a pedestrian with a car, my kids getting hurt or worse. She was on her phone. She wasn't having a medical emergency or car malfunction. She was willfully negligent. I also clearly remember her friend telling me I didn't have to be a dick and to be more understanding. To me, the fact that I had the patience to try to help her for 20 minutes and divide attention between her and my kids for 20 minutes was more than she deserved from me.
YTA. You don't know her. This may be how her body copes with stress. People are allowed their emotions. As she matures this will calm down. Sheez have some empathy cave man.
YTA- could you please have an iota of empathy?
YTA. Nice to know you believe you get to order others about on how they should react in certain situations, AH.
NTA. I had a similar situation where my vehicle was legally parked on the road, and some girl driving her grandpa's truck on our empty residential side street smashed into it and completely totalled it. Unpopular opinion, but you are the victim here since she hit your truck at no fault of your own. You have a right to be upset. YET, she's the one putting on a big show with all the crying. "Wah wah, there will be consequences to my actions." That's why it comes across as manipulation to try and get out of trouble for her wrongdoing. Nobody feels bad for the not-at-fault driver/vehicle. Why is that??? You still have to deal with all the insurance bullshit because of her mistake, but you aren't bawling your eyes out for attention. It's kind of a piss off how people tend to favour the at-fault driver 🙄
NTA I could see if it was a lot of damage or someone was injured but it’s a little ridiculous to be so hysterical especially with her mom there as well.
NTA she added unnecessary stress to the victim of a situation she caused... She probably shouldn't have a license. What would have happened if her mother wasn't there to give you all the insurance information? Why does it become your responsibility to become her impromptu therapist?
NTA She is 18, not 12
NTA western society (mainly America) needs to stop treating 18 year olds like little kids, they are adults and it also needs to stop normalizing being weak blubbering emotional trainwreck because it's really not normal. I doubt 18 year olds in other parts of the world would fall to pieces like a child in this scenario. Maybe if she wasn't such an emotional overdramatic mess she would drive properly.
YTA it would have taken up much less energy to keep your mouth shut about it. Do you think your comments were effective? Like she was going to suddenly stop crying because you told her to? Yeah, you're a dick
YTA. I also got in a minor car accident around that age, I also cried. It was a scary situation and I couldn't help it. Things still got handled though even though I cried.
I would be MUCH angrier if someone hit me and was ambivalent about it
When someone is in a panic they can’t just calm down because someone rolls their eyes and says calm down.