We’ve all been there and only few us ever became the same calm driver again. Once you go down the dark path, once bitten by the vicious virus called “road rage”.
For some, the virus doesn’t impact your normally calm demeanor, but for others this becomes a dark cloud hanging over you, threatening to cause havoc by the slightest disturbance. It’s normally triggered by some other factors; you’re stressed, another driver is stressed and you start to drive aggressively. I guess that’s what Stephen King based “Christine” on.
On the road, windows rolled up (or down) and the music is drumming through the car. Most of the time, it’s crap top of the pop music, and the person driving pretends it’s the coolest music on the planet.
The roads are their domain and anybody else is simply an obstacle. You know who I’m talking about – YOU!
Being on the road every day, commuting to work, I see how people turn into Jekyll and Hide. I know it, because I’ve been there too. One minute the person is putting on makeup, curling hair or shaving, the next minute utter words that should not be uttered unless you are in the darkest corners of Mordor.
More interesting, I’m amazed how cheap some of the cars on the road are. I don’t mean that cars on the roads are cheap and unsafe, I just mean that some people seem to buy expensive cars, but forget to get some of the essentials installed. How many times have you seen the indicator working on a Porsche or how often have you seen the driver of Mercedes-Benz S-class using the built-in blue-tooth/hands-free kit when on the mobile (cell) phone.
It was the great French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre who uttered the words “Hell Is Other People.” This is a man who never sat on a Dublin Bus bus in rush-hour traffic on a rainy day or queued for miles to pay for the so-called ‘pay-as-you-go’ toll crossing the George Washington Bridge. I’m sure he would have rephrased that statements slightly, making it more harsh before publishing it.
Having spent close to 3/4 of year commuting, when calculating the hours spent on the road over a 10 year period, it gets pretty depressing. So, I bought a Vespa scooter.
Now, instead of giving people the finger, show them my war face or bumping into them, I simple overtook their cars on my silver lightning scooter, while shouting “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker” inside my helmet.
The evil laughter echoes in my helmet as a crank the accelerator full throttle, hitting speeds of80 km/hour. I just “shaved” almost 90 minutes off my daily commute.
These days, I drive my V8 petrol to work. The petrol gage is moving steadily to the left, but at least my commute is max 11 minutes. I’m loving it. The car doesn’t even get warm in the winter time, before I park it at work.
Despite my short commute, I still look at my fellow commuters, while saying “Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do you?”
The morale of this short post. Take it easy while you drive. There’s absolutely no point screaming, punching, biting spitting inside your car. And, just because you sit in traffic doesn’t give you the right to abuse other drivers. Man, it’s only a car journey, so treat other drivers the way you want to be treated.