Road Warriors: Why guys act macho If you drive on American motorways, you’ve probably noticed that, more and more often, bullets are coming through your windshield. This is a common sign of Road Rage, which opinion makers have decided is a serious problem, currently ranking just behind global warming and several points ahead of Asia.
How diffuse is Road Rage? To answer that question, researchers at the National Institute of Traffic Safety recently did a study in which they drove on the interstate motorway system in a specially equipped observation van. By the third day, they were deliberately running other motorists off the road.
“These people are MORONS!” was their official report.
That is the main cause of Road Rage: the realization that many of your fellow motorists have the same brain structure as a peanut. The most common example, of course, is the motorists who feel a need to drive in the left-hand or “fast” lane, even though they are going slower than everybody else. Nobody knows why these motorists do this. Maybe they belong to some kind of religious cult that believes the right lane is sacred and must never come in direct contact with tyres. Maybe one time, years ago, these motorists happened to be driving in the left lane when their favourite song came on the radio, so they’ve driven over there ever since, in the hope that the radio will play that song again.
But whatever makes these people drive this way, there’s nothing you can do about it. You can blow your horn at them, but it will have no effect. people have been blowing their horns at them for years: it’s a normal part of their environment.
In addition to Road Rage, there is the experience of Car park Rage, which occurs when a motorist pulls into a crowded supermarket car park and sees people get into their car, clearly ready to leave, so they stop their car and wait for the other to leave the spot, and …. Nothing happens! They just stay there! WHAT IN THE WORlD ARE THEY DOING IN THERE??!! COOKING DINNER??? Who knows? perhaps they only do it to annoy.
When people finally get into the supermarket, they often experience Shopping Trolley Rage. This is caused by the people – and you just KNOW these are the same people who always drive in the left-hand lane – who routinely manage, by careful placement, to block the entire aisle with a single shopping trolley.
What makes the supermarket congestion even worse is that shoppers are taking longer and longer to decide what to buy, because every product in the supermarket now comes in an insane number of styles and sizes. For example, orange juice… for just one brand of orange juice, the shopper must decide between Original, homestyle, pulp plus, Double vitamin C, Calcium or Old Fashioned. Once that’s decided, then there’s the decision about 33 cl, half litre, one litre, one and a half litres or two litres or double pack size. TOO many choices. This creates ‘Too Many products Choice Rage’. A complaint to the producer will lead to experiencing ‘Automated phone Answering System Rage’ (“… for questions about pulp plus in the one litre size, press 44. For questions about pulp plus in the two litre size, press 45. For questions about…”)
The point is that there are many causes for rage in our modern world, and if we’re going to avoid unnecessary violence, we all need to “keep a cool head on our shoulders”. So let’s try to be more considerate, OK? Otherwise….