Road Rage

Why is it that some people’s personalities change so radically when they get behind the wheel of a car? We have all heard of road rage and maybe even been subjected to it. But to me, it is still a very strange and curious phenomenon.

As a former professional truck driver for 20 years, I have done a lot of driving in my life, so I have been able to observe this behavior with my own eyes more often than many people. And these incidents of road rage seem to be increasing. Frankly, it just baffles me. In my truck, I could just laugh it off, because a car will invariably come out the worst if it hits a truck.

But when I’m driving my own car on the freeway, especially on a nice day, it becomes much more personal and immediate. I may be sailing along in the fast lane at 75, 10 miles over the posted speed limit, but let’s get real, everybody else is doing it and the cops don’t seem to really care.

But then, I will invariably notice in my rearview mirror some angry, obstinate egomaniacal driver who is on some obscure mission to ill has crept up on me and is tailgating me, forcing me to go 80, which is too fast for me. I must yield by moving over a lane or risk getting hit!

I am a naturally slower driver, a trained defensive driver, so I have had ample opportunity to observe this. For some unknown reason, when certain drivers slip behind the wheels of their favorite ride, especially guys, I am sorry to report, it flips the STUPID switch on in their brains.

They become ravening drooling caricatures of themselves, speed freaks in the original sense. They become intent on passing everybody on the road, weaving in and out of traffic, cursing and flipping people off, playing the fool, and taking unnecessary chances with everybody’s life.

Hands clutched tightly in a death grip on the steering wheels, their eyes glazed over, they demonstrate every wrong driving technique in the DMV manual. They could be featured in a short warning film by the DMV film as exactly the wrong person to emulate.

This seems to be a growing problem in our society. I have read numerous articles about this growing trend. Experts caution that we are supposed to back off from aggressive drivers, supposed to realize that we can only control our own behavior, not other drivers.

If another driver cuts you off, your immediate reaction often determines what happens next. If you can back off, take a deep breath, and remain calm, then you can defuse a potentially violent, even possibly fatal situation.

After you get home you can vent about the driver who tailgated you across town, or why people act so irresponsibly at freeway speeds. But it doesn’t help you in the moment. While they are careening from lane to lane at unsafe speeds in traffic, blasting their horns, tailgating, screaming obscenities, and flipping you off it’s hard to control your own temper.

It doesn’t take much to set these road rage clowns off. The best way to deal with them is just to get out of their way, since these people seemingly cannot get out of their own way. I know it is hard to do. They are maddening, frustrating, and certainly self-destructive, so try not to get too emotionally invested in their own peculiar form of temporary insanity.

I always pull over to another lane and let an idiotic tailgating driver pass me by. Sometimes you just cannot move fast enough and you have to watch these maniacs pass you on the right side and then cut back right in front of you, cursing and screaming at you! This is hard to swallow and is also downright dangerous for both drivers.

They seem to be like the people in that Eagle’s song “Life In The Fast Lane.” “They went rushing down that freeway, messed around and got lost, they didn’t care, they were just dying to get off.”

It is like these road rage drivers are channeling into their inner Dale Earnhardt, a very popular NASCAR driver who routinely bumped other cars at ultra-high speeds in races as a racing tactic. Ironically, the late Mr. Earnhardt was killed in a NASCAR Daytona 500 race by another driver who used the same tactics that ended up killing him. Like they say, karma is a bitch.

Maybe these weird manic jerks are overcompensating for whatever personality inadequacies or problems they have in real life. Maybe they think that the faster and crazier they drive they feel at least, at last, for a short time in their miserable lives, they are in control instead of being jerked around.

All I can say is that a car is meant to be a convenient means of transportation, and should not be used like Charlton Heston in a chariot race to hell every time you get behind the wheel. For the rest of us, just take a deep breath, count to ten and try to stay out of their way.

There is no logical way to deal with a person intent on playing the fool, especially when they are behind the wheel of a car. Don’t play their game, don’t add any fuel to their road rage. In a perfect world, they will get what’s coming to them. In this world, they will probably just get by… this time. Next time, who knows?

Try your best not to get sucked into the vortex of their madness, there is no logic to their irresponsible actions.

People that give in to road rage are truly on “The Road To Nowhere”(Talking Heads)