A car windscreen was smashed with a wooden batten in an explosion of road rage in Tauranga yesterday .

The mid-afternoon incident reached boiling point when the leading car stopped on Cameron Rd's outside south-bound lane, opposite McDonald's playground near the 11th Ave intersection.

A witness who spoke on condition he was not named said that when the car stopped, the car coming up behind had to stop as well.

He then saw a person in the front car get out, walk up to a man in the passenger seat of the other car and "start swinging".

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The driver sitting next to the passenger then got out and joined in a melee which ended up with the passenger and driver fighting the person from the front car.

"It went on for a while. There was a bit of how's your father and yelling and carrying on."

With traffic jamming up behind the cars and the melee, several members of the public shouted at them to move on.

The witness said the guy in the front car had the final say. He went back, grabbed a wooden batten and proceeded to smash the windscreen of the other car. Both cars then drove off before police arrived.

He did not see what sparked the confrontation further down the road before the two cars reached the intersection.

A couple of beanies left behind by the brawling men marked the spot where the road rage incident happened.

Police issued a statement at 6.50pm yesterday that no arrests had been made at this stage and inquiries into the incident were ongoing.