The Madness of the Modern Motorist

I swear it's getting worse out there!

Posted by Paul Whitrow, 24th July, 2008 | Permalink | 1 Comment

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I say, I need the first lane please so would you mind moving over a bit?

I am at odds with myself...

Zen philosophy (Bushido's Modern Philosophy) teaches me that I should be patient, have compassion for my fellow man, not be surprised when someone does something that I don't quite agree with and to look for and understand the reasons why they would do it. So why is it that I get so damned angry in a car?

Simply put, other peoples stupidity. They could be the nicest folk you could ever meet in everyday life, but put then behind the wheel of a vehicle and all common sense would appear to get left behind in a cloud of tire smoke.

I have a short 20 - 30 minute journey into work every morning, and every morning it's like running a gauntlet of trials, with the punishment for failure being possible death or serious injury (I thought they outlawed these type of games hundreds of years ago?). Let me give you just two examples to illustrate my point:

1. I travel East from Junction 20 of the M5 (Clevedon) and hit a piece of road by the split level at the top of the hill, where the four lanes of the Motorway reduce to three by merging the two outside lanes (just begging for trouble if you ask me). Now, there is plenty of warning that this merge is approaching, several hundred yards worth of signs telling you to get ready, and yet every time, EVERY TIME, somebody will come screaming up from behind and push their way past you at the last second, making you swerve, brake, or both to avoid hitting them and in the process causing everyone else to do the same. This happened to me this morning. A muppet in a Mitubushi 4x4 (partial index *** 7474) did exactly this to me and the car in front of me. Meaning that in order to get past the both of us, he had to run over the hatchings and off the actual road to the right hand side, all at over 80 miles per hour, and with what looked like his wife in the car. I was astonished that someone would pull such an utterly ridiculous stunt! But the real icing on the cake was that around a half mile later he pulled into the middle lane and we over took him. Why the hell did he do that if he wasn't even going to stay in that lane?

2. My journey takes me over the Avonmouth Bridge where I turn off to pick up the A403 and head into Aust. There are currently road works causing the run off to go from two lanes into one. Annoying maybe but necessary I guess. So there we are, lined up in a nice neat queue of traffic, when along comes a prat in a big truck and starts to force his way in. He doesn't wait for someone to let him in, he quite literally just keeps drifting into the single lane, forcing the vehicles around him to take evasive action, and then starts glaring at us like it's our fault for being there and holding him up. I myself refused to let him in front of me so had to squash up as much as I could to the car in front of me, who in turn had to do the same to the one in front of him. The vehicles behind the truck had to brake to avoid being crushed, and that caused a concertina effect behind them. And so it went on. All because a plank of an individual couldn't be patient and show a little restraint. I wish I could tell you the license number or even the company name on the side of the vehicle, but alas it was too damn close for me to be able to see it!

"Road rage is a term used to refer to violent behavior by a driver of an automobile, which thus causes accidents or incidents on roadways. It can be thought of as an extreme case of aggressive driving."

Those are just two of the several incidents that occur on an all too regular basis, and the question I have to ask myself is why?

To date I have no definitive answer. I can only think that with all the restrictions on the roads, the way that we as motorists seem to be victimised by the authorities with their speed camera fetish, the constant appearance of seemingly un-necessary road works (usually around the end of the council's budget year, funny that!) causing hold ups and delays, coupled with the need to get things done faster and faster within our everyday lives, that all this has brought about our oldest and most savage human trait... our kill or be killed sense of survival.

This was fine thousands of years ago when we needed to defend ourselves or our family from rival villages who wanted to bugger us to death and eat our children, but really, do we have to apply that same attitude to the guy in the car in front who is driving a little bit slower than us? Do we have to stop him and club him to death because he didn't signal?

I hope not or we won't have to worry about destroying the Earth, we will have made our selves extinct long before that ever happens.

For more information read Wikipedia's page on Road rage.

Posted on Thursday 24th July, 2008 at 9:33 am by Paul Whitrow, and filed under General