Solutions for Road Rage

We need more ways to effectively and safely express our rage at other drivers in traffic.

I am about as calm and mild-mannered a fella as you can find. It takes some doing to make me lose my chill monklike demeanor. One place where one might be more able to get my ire up is in traffic. It’s a common affliction, road rage. Zipping around in thousands of pounds of metal and plastic, surrounded by hordes of idiots who don’t zip their metal and plastic around as well as we do, naturally it puts us on edge. It’s the most dangerous thing most people do on a normal basis, and sometimes the added danger or inconvenience that other people add to the ordeal can be intolerable. We lose our tempers. That’s fine. But we need more healthy ways to express our rage.

I stopped at a stop sign at a three-way intersection. Another driver stopped at their stop sign to my left. They were going to go straight and I was going to make a right turn. We stopped at about the same time. I believe I got their first, and maybe they believed the same, but it was close enough to call a tie. My understanding is that in such situations, it is the law and custom for the driver on the right, me, to get the right of way. When I acted on that right and accelerated, they did the same, then honked their horn, displeased that I had exercised my right and that they were in their rightful place behind me. As is appropriate, I yelled at them to fuck off. But I doubt they could hear me. My rage was a private experience. I could have thrown a middle finger out the window, but I fear I’ve grown too mature and wary of being a firearm homicide statistic to do that with the reckless abandon I did in my youth. What we need for these situations is an LCD screen on the back of our cars, on which we can boldly and brightly display messages for the benefit of drivers behind us. These would come with a selection of phrases, not all of them vulgar insults, as well as the ability to personalize messages, and would be voice activated for safety.

I was driving through the California North Bay on the 101, a busy high-speed freeway, going maybe ten to twenty miles over the speed limit, as is customary if not required. Another car cut in front of me from the adjacent lane. They did not use a turn signal and were going considerably slower than me. I had to brake fast. Dear reader, I cannot convey to you the heights my fury reached. If that driver had been in the car with me, I might have beaten them senseless or at least verbally abused them as mercilessly. As it was, once again, I was the sole audience to my vitriolic soliloquy. I needed a better way to express myself. What we all need are paintball guns mounted between the grill and bumper of our cars. When another driver cuts us off, as recklessly and disrespectfully as was done to me, we should be able to pepper the rear of their car with bright neon paint splatters.

I was driving on a winding stretch of rural highway. It’s a drive I’d done many times, but this time I found myself stuck behind a nervous virgin. Based on his performance, this may have been the driver’s first time driving at all, let alone on this particular road. He was going twenty miles below the speed limit and braking constantly. He was braking to make turns while driving uphill. This is a narrow highway and passing is technically not permitted. There are shoulders and turnoffs, with signs instructing slower drivers to use them. This person refused to heed those instructions, passing every turnoff at a snail’s pace, with his tail tickling my nose, and a chain of other frustrated drivers behind me. I tried flashing my high beams. Tried honking. Zero dice. Eventually, I’d had enough. When I had a clear enough straightaway ahead, I went into the opposing lane and sped around, ahead, and away from him, my girlfriend giving the terrible driver the finger as we passed, because she is a beautiful woman and allowed this pleasure with less risk of being shot at. For situations like these, we need a way to get obstructionist traffic out of the way. A plow or cowcatcher sounds feasible, but would be a hassle to rig up and haul around on most vehicles. Also, destructive and unsafe. We need a sort of electronic plow, a system through which cars can sense and communicate with one another, and when one of them is moving slower than a mole on a toad’s ass, an autopilot kicks in to ease it out of the way. This is the most complex and expensive solution, but also one most likely to be applied, particularly as autonomous driving advances.

These and many more solutions are a must, for the sake of road safety, and for all our mental health.