Mini-Rant: Road Rage
There’s an often-repeated cliche that, when you take driving lessons, you’re learning to pass the test, not learning to drive … and that, once the test is passed, you then start the real phase of learning.
I’ve found this to be completely true. Since passing my driving test several months ago, I’ve learnt many things about every aspect of driving. But nothing that I have learned has come across quite so strongly as the realization of the simple fact that there is no such thing as “Road Rage“.
Oh yeah, there are angry drivers. People that would just as soon punch you in the face as let you in front of them onto the motorway when you’re coming off a sliproad. People that will chase you up the outside lane, where you’re already going way faster than you technically should and flash at you, forcing you over into the middle lane … only to pass you, then pull in right in front of you and slow down to 60.
But even in the face of this kind of stupid behaviour, I’ve not even been close to “Road Rage“. Surely, if it’s a legitimate “illness“, it has the potential to affect everyone … rather than being limited to the element of society that’s already in need of a serious dose of valium!
Arseholes invade our every day life on a regular basis and this has nothing to do with being behind the wheel of a car.
If a person is rude, obnoxious and generally filled with hate whilst driving, chances are they are exactly the same in every other situation with which life presents them. Their attempts to justify their complete self-centred arrogance and bad-tempered behaviour by pretending they’re only wankers whilst driving is nothing but a thinly veiled admission of guilt.
The very idea of this behaviour being caused by the situation is busted wide open when we consider that a whole flock of other “something-rage” “sicknesses” are now commonplace. Basically, there is an element of the population that no longer believe in acting like civilized human beings.
Thankfully, there are very few arseholes in my life. Yeah, I’ve met some real tosspots in my time, but they don’t tend to hang around long if you refuse to nourish their ego by validating their unnecessarily angry actions and attitudes.
The whole mentality surrounding the labelling of “Road Rage“, “Air Rage” and “God-Knows-What-Else Rage” as afflictions serves only to further validate these people’s behaviour and give them permission to continue to be an arsehole.
It’s time that we stopped “protecting” the arseholes in our midst and started kicking them into some kind of shape. They will not try to be civil until someone tells them that they are offensive to the entire concept of society. And if they refuse to comply … well, we can always make it look like suicide …
MisterShouty 