Road Rage...Looks Good On You!

I imagine that EVERYONE has at one time or another experienced a 'road rage' incident. I have to say that, due to the amount of driving I do, I have certainly had my fair share of road rage experiences. The latest happened very recently, and led to a train of thought that has left questions un-answered.

Here is my story.....

I was driving home at around 4pm last Thursday. The road I was travelling on has a speed limit that ranges between 70km and 80km. There wasn't much traffic at all on that part of the road at that time, but I did notice another car in the distance behind be. Within no time at all, this other car was quickly closing the gap between our cars. I was already doing 10km over the limit on a bendy road, and did not want to drive faster just to accommodate this other cars need for speed.

Within a minute or 2, I noticed a flag woman up ahead waving a stop sign. I started to slow down, and looked in my rear mirror to check that the car behind me was also slowing down before I came to a complete stop. Although I used my brakes to give the car behind warning that I was stopping, it didn't look like it was slowing down at all...so much so, that I ended up stopping a little bit further along the road than I normally would for construction.

As I came to a complete stop, the car that was behind me drove onto the other side of the road and passed me while sounding the horn. I sounded my horn back. The car stopped a short distance ahead of me, and a man in his late 50's got out of the car. He was ranting extremely loud, and gestering to me...then he stopped...when he saw the flag woman at the edge of the road.

She asked him what he was doing, and he said....."I wanted to know why the hell that car had stopped in the middle of the road". He was still shouting.

She told him to get back in his car and to wait until the construction vehicles had passed.

I looked at her...she looked at me...both of us with this huge expression on our faces as if to say "what on earth is this guys problem?"

Now you would think, given the embarrasment he must have been feeling, that when we were permitted to go on our way, he would start driving a little more 'calmer'. But no, he sped off into the distance, probably still feeling angry at....what?

So he obviously did not realise that we HAD to stop for the construction. He did not see the signs, or the flag woman. He just assumed that I had decided to stop in the middle of the road for no apparent reason, and was sooo mad about it that he sped passed me sounding his horn. With me sounding my horn back at him, this must have tipped his anger over the edge, so he decided to slam his brakes on...stop ahead of me...for the objective of having a road rage confrontation with me.

Two directions of thought hit me with this:

1) How scary is it that people can get so worked up when driving, that they actually embrace actions that are not socially acceptable.

2) What if I had been having a problem with my car and didn't have a choice but to stop. Or worse...what if I was having a medical emergancy which forced me to stop my car in the road? Would he be wasting crucial time to shout and scream at me instead of assisting me?

There are a few documentaries shown on TV that cover theories about why road rage is becoming more increasingly a part of our every day lives.

Some suggest that our social skills have drastically deteriorated due to extreme lack of personal interaction in todays world of texting.

Some may suggest that integration of different cultures could be to blame, with tolerance levels for lack of understanding becoming low.

It is interesting to analyse why this is happening to us, but I have to say this......

As an entity, we still know what is right and wrong. We still have the intelligence to be able to make decisions. We are still responsible for our own actions.

Therefore it doesn't matter what theories there are....we can either choose to be decent people, or choose to be assholes on the way home.