invention of the wheel

What Triggers Road Rage?

"Here are some most common triggers for prompting an act of road rage:

• Not reacting soon enough after a light turns green.
• Weaving back and forth between lanes.
• Cutting other drivers off.
• Pulling out in front of someone and then slowing down after doing so.
• Tailgating to pressure other drivers to go faster or get out of the way.
• Trying to beat a yellow light turning red and obstructing a lane of traffic.
• Traveling in the passing lane at a slower rate of speed, making it impossible for others to pass you.
• Not paying attention because of being on the phone/making an obscene gesture.

The best survival strategy is to stay out of the way as there is no reasoning with someone who is behaving irrationally.

It takes two people to initiate the problem of road rage and if there is only one participant in the act, it narrows the possibility of an even more dangerous situation."

In other words: don't escalate, instead walk away like the dominated corporate bee you suspect you are.

So says our beloved University police force, and I know you have all experienced the flash of rage that occurs when one of these things happens to you. How the police arrived at this list I have no idea. Interviewing recent crash victims about their "feelings?" "Please ignore your gaping head wound and tell us what it was that made you want to kill." It seems to me that the police have made a glaring omission here in leaving out the infamous "pull around," which is guaranteed to provoke seething wrath within parsecs. This occurs frequently to me: I am sitting at a red light when an SUV pulls up next to me on my right; then, when the light turns green, the SUV burns about a gallon of gas pulling around in front of me while my much more gas-efficient Kia (which is apparently powered by eco-squirrels) struggles to keep up. I am so instantly enraged by this that I immediately wish death on the person doing it, and often wish I had a faster ride so that I could block the offender off and force him to drive directly into a parked car.

If I did so, would I really be to blame? I am a staunch believer in instant public karma. In order to make life in society of strangers liveable, there are certain rules that exist in public space, and I firmly believe that people who break them should be instantly rebuked (my version of a rebuke would be sort of like a taser of justice coming down from on high). The things that drive me insane are endless, but here are a few common examples:

--Parents who think that wage slaves working retail are magically-provided nannies that exist to give them free child care while they shop
--Fat white people who can't pick up their trash or put their trays away at cafeterias
--Old men who cough, mumble, fart, or hork up giant clots of emphysema while assuming that just because they're deaf, no one can hear them
--Fat people who insist on taking the elevator one floor up or down, thus extending my ride indefinitely
--People who can't be bothered to return their shopping carts to the collection area, assuming that the store will just find some brown-skinned kid to do it
--People who spill liquids in public and then flee, rather than cleaning them up or at least notifying some poor slob with a mop
--People who walk very slowly in front of me while gabbing about nothing and pointing
--People who cut in line
--People who talk or sing to themselves in public like a lunatic, but are perfectly capable of having a normal conversation if spoken to
--People who don't tip

Basically, there are only two reasons why people perform these amazing annoyances: either they're so oblivious to the way society runs that they honestly don't know they're offending people (which borders on both stupid and sociopathic), or they do know and are just purposely ignoring the rules, banking on the fact that others will obey the rule to be polite and not call them out. When you do call someone out on any of the above, they behave like scolded children and fly into an accusatory tantrum--evidence that supports the latter theory. The few times I've succeeded in preventing someone from pulling around me, he (and it's always a he) has honked at me, tailgated me, gesticulated obscenely, and even passed on the left across a double yellow line, against oncoming traffic. The behavior makes absolutely no sense, since he was the one breaking the law, except to communicate that not a single one of these fuckers appreciates being foiled. Well, I say FOIL THEM ALL.

(This entire post was prompted by the experience of being rear-ended this morning. M and I were sitting at a red light, when all of a sudden the car jerked violently and there was a loud "bang." M and I, highstrung from mentally preparing for the horrors of our jobs, both instantly screamed before we even knew what had happened. Of course, we were extremely nice to the guy who ran into us. He was one of the good ones. But they are few and far, far between. Next time you see flagrant disregard for public rules, remember the taser of justice.)