Road Rage Revisited

I was in a prayer meeting a year or two ago, where one of the participants honestly and bravely admitted that she struggles with road rage. Particularly in a metropolitan city like Toronto where you have drivers from different generations, cultures, ages, sexes, and social classes, you are bound to eventually be a victim of a bad driver, or even be one yourself. In the past few years, there have been stories of street racing and the unfortunate byproducts of idiots (usually young males) who put their lives in danger, but of more concern, they put the lives of innocent bystanders in danger. If these young punks die in a speeding accident, I shed no tear for them. They made their bed - they will be sleeping in it. But sadly, road racing does not happen in a vacuum, and seldom is it just the participants who are injured and / or killed. I'm sure we've all heard of cases where innocent bystanders walking their kids on the sidewalk all of the sudden have their lives taken from them in a tragic accident. Even folks who are stopped at a light or stop sign with their cars have been maimed or killed by people who are speeding. People are rightfully angry about this, and they should be. But that is not the topic of this discussion, though I'm sure I'll visit it another day.

What I'm focussing on when I say road rage are people who are (usually) an offended victim, who decide to retaliate through various means. The most often cause of this is someone who cuts you off. Now, this may not seem like that much of a big deal to most of you, but if it wasn't, we wouldn't have incidents of people following others in their car, attacking them physically when stopped, vandalizing their car, or pulling out a firearm and providing a dose of mentally unstable frontier justice.

The very first incident of road rage, I saw when I was a little kid - about seven or eight years old. My Dad was driving us home in our snot-green Chevrolet Malibu in Edmonton, when all of the sudden, one of the cars to our right tried to pass another car and that car would not let them pass. I remember being stopped at a light and looking over and seeing two pretty scruffy looking dudes jump out and start mouthing what I almost certainly can conclude were obscenities to one another (my window was thankfully up, so my poor virgin ears did not have to be subjected to this at such an early age). My Dad didn't really see the incident and when I told him, he just drove on, indicating, "this is not our business." Of course, being a naturally curious sort, I decided to crane my head back, as we were driving away. The last thing I saw (and this image has been seared into my mind ever since) was one of the men pushing the other guy, who then slugged him in the face. They then both grappled with each other and fell onto the sidewalk where I remember one guy being on top and pounding the snot out of the other guy. I always thought that that was one of the most interesting things I've ever seen in my entire life.

As a young person growing up who relied on my Dad for transportation (my Mom was too timid to drive us around), I don't remember ever seeing my Dad blow his top at a fellow driver. Perhaps that could be because on occasion, my Dad was the one who "accidentally" cut off someone, go to slow and drew the wrath of other drivers who liberally produced a middle finger salute, which my Dad simply ignored. But I never saw my Dad get red-faced, or explode in a demonstration of expletives because of being wronged by another driver. I give my Dad much credit in how I conducted himself, and I hope that for the most part, I have learned from his example (even though I cannot claim that I have a wrath-free record when driving). I'd like to leverage some of my experiences and perhaps show the other side of the road rage conversation. I will, at the outset, be very clear that I do not condone road rage. My wife has been wronged by other drivers and she generally gets upset and starts to mouth some obscenities under her breath, but that's about as far as it goes. Interestingly enough, she does the same thing when playing international online backgammon. But my wife is a fairly amendable person to begin with, and as such, there is much to respect about how she handles such people. I, on the other hand, cannot claim such a perfect record, so I totally empathize with my fellow believer who confessed her anger at bad drivers.

Now, I can tell you that I have never bumped anyone off the road. I have never followed anyone home. I have never vandalized anyone's car (felt like it one time, but coolness easily prevailed. For this reason, I never want to get one of those Christian fish symbols on my car). I have never physically accosted someone. I've never gotten out of my car (came close once). In fact, there was only ONE time in my entire life that I exercised some questionable behaviour in response to a bad driver. My wife, was, unfortunately, witness to this bad display, as well as my son, who thankfully, as an infant, will not ever recollect his Daddy blowing his top like this. It was several years ago at the mall near my house. As with most malls in the Toronto area, entering the parking lot of a mall usually was set up in a "T" structure. If you look at the letter "T", you can see the horizontal line and the vertical line. I was going into the mall in the vertical line and had the right of way. It was an intersection which had a stop sign on either side of the horizontal "T" line. As I was making my left, I was severely cut off by some young punk ass 20-year-old something guy who obviously thought it was a three way stop even though it wasn't. Now, this typically doesn't bother me, since people make mistakes all the time, and usually, I'd gesture to them through my windshield that I had the right of way and then they apologize and let me through. Sometimes, I see they are too far into the intersection, so I will let them through. No biggie, right? We're all adults here. Well, this guy, for whatever reason, insisted on going through the intersection even though I was already in it and had the right of way. So I honked my horn and politely (honest!) gestured that I had the right of way. He then rolled out his windows and started screaming a barrage of "F" words to me, followed by a racial epithet, as well as a single middle finger salute. Well, the F-words irritate me, but the racial epithets threw me overboard. I rolled down my window and started throwing all sorts of F-words at him, showing him that I had two middle fingers that functioned perfectly well, and then threw my arms out as in the gesture "you want a piece of me?" Honestly, had he gotten out of his car, I probably would have gotten out of mine. But thankfully, my wife was there and touched my arm and said, "that's enough - just let the *ss**** go. You don't need to do this." We got to the mall, and I was so steamed I didn't even remember what we bought that day. I ended up writing the town a letter indicating that they need to change that intersection so it clearly says incoming traffic has the right of way, in order to avoid these types of situations. Since then, I have seen several accidents at that intersection, no doubt due to people having no clue as to who is supposed to go first.

Now, given that that is my only claim to fame for road rage all these years, it's not too bad (of course, I would have preferred to have my Dad's 100% all clean non-rage driving record - at least it was 100% all clean when we were around). I think back on it and am a little embarrassed that I made such a spectacle in front of my family, but since I am typically not prone to such public outbursts, I suspect that anyone, even the most mild mannered individual, given the right set of circumstances and environmental factors, can just as easily pounce on a bad driver, and one who decides that it is YOUR fault, even though it is clearly theirs. I think this is probably the single aspect of an interaction that would cause a road rage incident. Usually, if someone cuts me off and I give them the horn, they will admit that they are wrong and give a wave of their hand. That is cool. We all make mistakes. I've done the same thing to other people, and had to apologize. However, when someone decides to put the blame on you for something they did, I suspect many people will see the inherent injustice in that.

Now, as much of an advocate of gun ownership that I am, I am glad that we don't live in the U.S., where everyone can simply carry a gun around because it's enshrined in their constitution. I've heard of way too many sad incidents of people pulling weapons out and opening fire on each other, when in fact a little time to cool down and some clear thinking would have saved them a lot of aggravation, a criminal record, and prison time. But of course, in this day and age, when people are increasingly stressed by work, finances, family life and relationship problems, many people on the roads and highways are ticking time bombs waiting to go off. I usually can spot them by their aggressive driving and complete lack of discretion when using their horns. I usually get out of their way, not because I feel like being bullied, but I would prefer not to get into an altercation with them. Besides, it's so easy to act on impulse and do something you regret later, so sometimes, it's just better to yield. I know it's harder said than done, and in a multicultural city in Toronto, it's very easy to identify a certain demographic by their driving skills and dump all over them. But I believe that, just like anything else, we show more character in restraint than by acting by impulse, so while it may be our natural inclination to show someone our gracefully erect middle digit, it really doesn't ultimately accomplish anything positive.