With over 2000 miles driven for the past couple of weeks, I have decided to write about “road rage.” As I was thinking about what to write during a short trip to a nearby restaurant for some lunch, I had a small incident on the way home to help me get started. Our university is about to start up for the next term, and there are about thirty thousand students arriving in our city of about thirty thousand. Our number of cars on the road has doubled in one weekend, and traffic is pretty horrible. On the way home from the restaurant, I had to make a left-hand turn at a busy intersection, and as I inched along after waiting through two light changes a large SUV cut in front of me almost hitting my front end and slammed on its brakes to avoid hitting the car in front of me. I then had to hit my brakes to avoid hitting the SUV, which caused the car behind me to do the same. We all lived through it, but I yelled through my windshield at the SUV and called them a bad name. Then I realized that I had just experienced some road rage and, while avoiding an accident caused by an inconsiderate driver, had become inconsiderate for a moment myself.
My wife has said that she does not enjoy going with me because I holler at other drivers sometimes. She is right, and I holler at drivers who will not leave the left-hand lane even when driving below the speed limit, or the car that you are about to pass that speeds up to match your speed no matter how fast you are going, or the car that starts to pass a semi and slows down to match the truck’s speed when beside it for the next few miles. I yell when the car you are overtaking decides to pull out in front of you to pass someone and sometimes pulls out when you are beside them. Of course there is the car that passes you at a high rate of speed and pulls in front of you to then slow down forcing you to pull out to pass them. I guess you could keep naming those drivers who cause problems and sometimes accidents—including the girl who passed me on my motorcycle doing over 80 and driving with her knees as she was texting. The problems they present to the driving public are not being looked at by the highway patrols anymore. They are seen only by those of us who have survived their inept attempt at driving a motor vehicle.
A friend told me that he was given a ticket because he turned into a turning lane too soon and crossed a double solid line. He was going to make a turn, and the traffic ahead of him was long and stopped so he turned into the lane about fifty feet too soon. Had the policeman stayed there he could have ticketed 500 more cars in the next hour because everybody in town does the same thing, but a retired doctor in his Honda Civic got the ticket. What is really irritating is that, had the policeman moved down the street about 100 yards, he could have ticketed a driver for running the red light at every turn of the light. This never seems to happen, and the red lights and stop signs seem to be challenges now instead of traffic controls. Have you noticed how speed limits seem to work on the interstates now? If it says 65 most drive 75 to 80 with a few toping that. A section of interstate 79 near Pittsburgh is limited at 55, and I have just started to set my speed at 70 to keep up with most of the traffic. Even at 15 miles an hour over the limit I am passed by nearly half of the traffic. There is hardly ever a police car on the road and when there is the traffic slows to 70 and then speeds up when past the police car. No respect for the speed limit and no respect for the policeman. Most of the traffic violations in my city are DUIs, which happen after midnight. Our bars are open until 3:00 a.m., and between 12 midnight and 3 most of the underage drinking and drug traffic happens so most of our police force works during this time. I’m not sure where the officer came from to give my friend the ticket for improper lane change because we hardly ever see road patrols during the day.
Most of the road rage we see and hear of now is the result of people being able to make up their own rules of the road without interference from the police patrols. If the speed limit is 55 and you get away with driving 60 pretty soon you try to drive 65. When you are not pulled over for 65, why not try 70 and so on. The management of traffic laws has decreased because of many reasons, but two of the main reasons are the state legislatures being unwilling to fund the proper level of police numbers and to increase that number as population and numbers of vehicles increases. The second reason is the advent of new technology of radar and laser devices to use for speed control. With these, a police officer has to sit in his car for extended periods, giving him or her a very boring job. Most policeman would rather do real police work than sit in their vehicle looking at traffic through a speed measuring device. There are also laws in some states such as Penn. that prohibit local police departments from using the radar or laser devices and reserves them for the state patrols. Of course, most state police departments are underfunded and undermanned. I sometimes wonder if the trial lawyers associations have anything to do with less traffic enforcement due to the large portion of their income from litigating traffic accidents. This may be also due to pressure from lobbyists, from the auto parts manufacturers and from distributors.
Since I came home from lunch with another self-experienced road rage incident, I hope that young driver does not pull that maneuver in front of a driver who is ready to take road rage a step further as the taxi driver in New York did when she exited the cab and started to fight then returned to her cab and rammed a couple of cars. It has been even worse with many road rage incidents being ended with a firearm and people being shot and killed. A recent incident involved a man who exited his ride and hit a man who had tapped on his window thinking it was his Uber car. He hit the man knocking him to the ground and killing him. This, for a tap on a window. The incidents are not going to stop until once again the states decide to fund traffic control, and speeders and reckless drivers are pulled over and ticketed. Of course a revamp of our drivers education would help. It is too easy to get a drivers license, and many have received little or no real training especially in the area of emergencies and reactions to various road conditions. The states should take a good look at how we train pilots and pattern driver education after the FAA’s requirements for a pilot’s license. The emergency training alone would save many lives on our roads.
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