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I watched the video and read the article. (I wish I didn't; I love cats. I've known some wonderful bodega cats myself.)

But I'll bet I already have a mode that makes me want to drive away from people I don't know who are acting weird around my car.

I mean: I've got options. I can fight, flee, or hang out and investigate.

But I'm human -- I'm going to make what ultimately turn out to be poor decisions sometimes. I will have this condition until the day I die, and there isn't a single thing I can do about it (except to choose to die sooner, I guess).

So to posit an example: I'm already behind the wheel of my fleeing-machine with an already-decided intent to leave. And a stranger nearby is being weird.

I've now got a decision to make. It may be a very important decision, or it may instead be a nearly-meaningless decision.

Again, I've got options. I may very well decide that fighting isn't a good plan, and that joining them in exploring whatever mystery or ailment they may perceive is also not a great idea, and thereby decide that fleeing is the best option.

This may be a poor choice. It may also be the very best choice.

I don't know everything, and I can't see everything, and I do not get to use a time machine to gain hindsight for how this decision will play out.

(But I might speculate that if I stopped to investigate every time I saw a nearby stranger act weird at night in neighborhoods with prominent security gates that I might have fewer days remaining than if I just left them to their own devices.)

[phatskat]

That’s an interesting perspective. The way I’ve always approached it is that if someone is looking at my car weird, I should probably ask what’s up. I’ve honked over several cars to let them know their tire is flat, flagged down drivers in parking lots because some dumbass let a ton of nails fall off their work truck, etc. When it comes to cars, someone checking out my car in a “weird” way is a prompt to me to investigate, not flee.

[ssl-3]

It's a perspective, prefaced with a speech about human error. I might get it wrong -- so might you, yourself.

There remains some reason for the businesses and residents of the neighborhood in which Kit Kat was run over to have spent money to install and maintain things like security gates and iron pickets in front of the glass and entryways of their buildings.

When I find myself in such a neighborhood at night and am already intent upon leaving, is not my intention to stick around and maybe find out what that reason might be.

It is instead my intention to simply leave.